I have so much on my mind, I don't know where to start or how to make this post sound like anything sensical.  You will just have to bear with whatever it is that I manage to spew out. =)

I spend a lot of time beating myself up over what I have eaten.  Yes, I have been doing that since the day that I stopped losing weight and slowly started gaining (a lovely grand total of 82 pounds gained since winter 2011. Pathetic).

These self-punching-bag sessions usually start at about 4am when I inevitably wake up in the morning (with an hour and a half to spare grrrrr).  Horrible thoughts just start spinning around - why did you eat that?  Why couldn't you control yourself?  Why did you not count calories like you promised yourself you would?  Why?  why WHY?  Fast-forward to that very evening and I am at the peanut butter jar again. It is an ugly, viscous cycle that I have been trying to get a handle on for 3 fucking years, and I have been failing all along.

Some good things though:  I am still sugar-free.  And I am very very low carb still - no bread, no rice, no potatoes, the only fruit I eat is berries, sparingly, and only the lower carb veggies (so no carrots or red peppers etc).  I have had 1 "cheat" weekend in an effort to rev up my metabolism (fail...) and I think 2 other occasions where I ate crackers.  Other than that, I am on track with WHAT I eat.  I know the problem is HOW MUCH I eat of everything that is on my "ok" list.

I am hoping that knowing the problem and attempting to address it will help me in getting back to the healthier person I was 3 years ago.  I think the other part of my problem is a lack of accountability.

First and foremost, I don't hold myself accountable "in the moment"; this accountability always come out in the aforementioned middle-of-the-night ranting..  So,  I need to work on being in the moment when I am about to eat something and really deciding if I need it, if I want it, or am just on autopilot and shoving food down my throat out of habit.  I fear that this is really the root of my problem.  I am convinced I have a mental condition that just wants me to put food in my mouth and damn the consequences.

Second, keeping track of calories is hard. And annoying.  And I am terribly lazy.  I worked sooooo hard in the years I was losing weight, tracking every morsel and all.  It wore me down to a nub.   I have my breakfast and lunch (during the work week) down to a science.  I have exactly 522 calories every day before leaving for home in the evenings.  I have been on this schedule for about a month now and it is working.  I am hoping that I can commit to myself to track calories for just the half day after I leave my office.

Third, when I was losing the weight in the first place, I not only had TONS of goals (now I only have 1: get back to where I was) but I also had these mean little thoughts about "proving" my mom and my doctor wrong that I would never lose weight.  So, there was a lot of outwardly-directed anger that was actually pretty helpful.  Now all my anger is directed inward and I feel like that is working against me.

So, as of this morning my plan is pretty simple: 1) stay in the moment when eating, and 2) count the calories that make it into my mouth while 3) being accountable, not angry, at myself and 4) lean on the support that I have been ignoring for the past years i.e. 3FC threads.  and maybe 5) come up with some goals.

Now I am tired and feel spent, really thinking about all of this and then writing it all down.

One day at a time I suppose.

If anyone out there is actually reading this, I could use any support you feel like giving :)

Some measurements for posterity!

This morning's weight: 201.8 (but 207 at the docs 6 hours later.  Bodies are the silliest)

5/28/14 Cholesterol 188
5/28/14 123 / 82
8/12/14 Electrolytes all came back within normal range
8/12/14 Calcium 8.7 (too low by .1)


I haven't yet gone over 50 net carbs, but I also haven't met my calorie restrictions; I am having too much fun with cream :( After so many years of no fat, its like perma-party up in here.

I better crack down if I want to see some actual weight loss...

Keto Calculator

This morning's weight: 203.8

I went to http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/ to get my goals, and this is what it looks like for me:

 personal macros:

1325	kcal Daily Calorie Intake
40	g Carbohydrates (12%, 160 kcal)
80	g Protein (24%, 320 kcal)
94	g Fat (64%, 845 kcal)

here is a visual representation of  macros and  deficit. The size of each area is correctly scaled based on my ratios.

Weight Maintainence	Your Target	Deficit
1892 kcal	1325 kcal	567 kcal

Oy Vay

This morning's weight: 203

Things have been rough.  It's been another year.  I am giving something else a shot.

My foot injury put me in a funk and I grew tired of measuring measuring measuring. My weight was up to 212 on 6/30/14 so I went full-hog calorie counting like mad (1000-1200 a day) and exercising 5x a week (C25k and lifting).  I lost 11 pounds in 4 weeks.  Then my brother came to town and I had quite a great time - but I ate all sorts of starches that I shouldn't have and this morning I am 203.

This week I have been obsessively learning all I could about the High Fat, Low Carb lifestyle.  I am fascinated by the research that is currently being done, and the light that is being shed on the old research.  If anyone reading this is interested, I highly suggest you watch the Fat Head documentary and if it grabs your attention the way it did mine, you will be looking up info left and right, too!

So, in the interest of SCIENCE  I am going to use my blog track  any progress I make and how I am feeling.

While I am already pretty much low carb, I don't think I have been keeping myself low enough to be in ketosis.  I think I have a leg-up on most newbie HFLCers because I gave up the sugar and bread years ago. I just have to watch my veggie intake to keep it low as can be, and no more fruit, which is hard.  But, fruit is just nature's candy and spikes blood sugar like mad, so I will have to keep that in mind.  I am also going to keep track of calories for a while.  Since I am watching carbs anyway (switched to MyFitnessPal since there is a great app for it) the calories are right there.  I am shooting for under 1600 a day, but I am not goign to be too hard on myself for the first few weeks while I adjust to actually eating fat.

Carb goals are def under 50, but I am going to shoot for net  20.  I really like my veggies though so that is making me edgy.

Guess we will see...

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.