The physics of it all

I should not feel disappointed nor hard done by, but nonetheless the scales are teaching me a hard lesson. 

After 10 days of eating in a relaxed manner, gaining weight and allowing more and more of the surrounding cakes and goodies into my diet, I jumped back onto the wagon 2 days ago. 

Two whole days. 48 hours. 

And since then I have been rewarded with a weight loss of absolutely zero. 

My sensible self tells whispers that I'm lucky to have stopped gaining and of course there follows a stabilising pause before the trend will reverse. But still, I expected to see something after my recent effort. 

Not so. The science of mass states that what goes in must be burnt off, or weight will be gained. We must constantly run to stand still on the scales and that is why maintenance of any weight loss is sooo damned difficult. 

No, I'm not perfect...

...and I don't have it totally sussed. 

My dieting history is more Alpine range than undulating countryside but I continue to try and each time I fall ( or fail) I get back up and keep trying. 

I'm currently doing a home made kind of Cambridge Weight Plan diet. I had success with it earlier this year when I had some extra weight that I had to address swiftly, before I outgrew the rest of my wardrobe. And I continue dabbling with it in my current phase of maintenance. 

Some days it works. Some days it doesn't. Today was one of those days. 

The annoying thing is that I predicted it might happen. I knew if I had another piece of birthday cake ( mainlining sugar paste) it would set in motion a series of unavoidable and regrettable events whereby I eat my fill of toast, chocolate and breakfast cereal. 

Without a proper meal all day, I am at present stuffed full of all the foods I've largely avoided in the last month. 

So it is over. And tomorrow I will regroup, refocus and get back to the basics of the eating plan. It's all about damage limitation. Take action and get results. 

Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes

Me and my body have had something of a Eureka moment this last week.

Things have happened to me that I have never before experienced in my life:

I've stopped feeling constantly hungry

I've stopped always wanting more, always wanting something else

I've felt satisfied once I've eaten

I've recognised true hunger without the associated need to eat immediately

I've felt my eating plan is manageable

My eating is controlled and stable

Interested?

I gave up refined sugar 8 days ago.

I was TERRIFIED of taking the step. No biscuits! No cakes! No chocolate! No scones! In fact none of the 600 calories of junk I usually eat in a day.(Yes, I often count them- tracking is supposed to help...)

I read a book called Only Fat people Skip Breakfast ,a very simple book aimed at binge eaters. It was sensible and practical rather than an extreme 'banish sugar and carbs and drink kale smoothies' book. 
One message I took from it was:

If you always do what you are doing, you will always get what you're getting.

This is me, and I am not alone.

Each 'new start' I propose or 'line I draw' in declaration of a new weight loss regime is never new.

My plan is usually to eat the same things that I like but to exercise perfect control and restriction as I have never managed in the past. This time it'll be different I tell myself.

I have never quite grasped that I continually try and fail at this, and will continue to do so unless, I do something different and change it.

So I am. I'm doing it in a sensible pragmatic way for me and cutting (some) of the refined sugary crap from my diet and cross my fingers that I lose my sweet tooth.

Always Learning

It would appear every day IS a school day:here's what I've learnt today

Any degree of hangover makes it impossible for me to stick to the confines of a healthy diet plan.

I've only drank alcohol occasionally lately and have noticed I am less inclined to evening munchies on nights when i don't drink and also the day after, when I have no hangover.

I think, without alcohol the night before, my mood is more positive. I feel more motivated and that I will be able to follow my plan. 

When I regularly had a glass or two of wine most nights, even when not overtly hungover the following day, I felt a bit more at the mercy of the black dog (or black clouds or whatever) and all the associated negativity. In my book, any negativity always finds an 'out' through that which I eat and it's never an overindulgence in veg or salad!
I'm going to continue with little or no alcohol for a while in a bid to minimise these consequences. Keeping the weight off and the diet on is hard enough without the added challenge of calorific wine and ruinous hangovers.

After 43 years, I'm learning more about what works for me, how to make it happen and keep it happening. This IS new. Maybe I'm growing up at last! Just maybe.

Portion Control

The 'dieting mojo' and being 'in the zone' are such tenuous entities; they seem to come and go at will and before you can say 'I've had a great dieting day', you find yourself face first in the biscuit cupboard with a binge descending around you. 

I have noted one of my triggers to binge in the past is being overly full and this was the case last night. I was too full with too much baked potato and too much quorn and bean casserole. It was calorie counted and balanced but was much too large a portion. Why this over eating should trigger more over eating I do not know. All I know is that when I start, I cannot stop. I feel I am missing an 'off' switch.

The lesson here is portion control. No matter what the food. Over eating is not a kind thing to do to yourself: it makes me feel awful physically and mentally as my frame of mind turns against me too. Portion control. Will try to remember that this week.

The Paradox of Dieting

Maintaining my weight has not led me to the 'normal' way of eating as I had hoped. The kind where you eat when hungry, stop when pleasantly satisfied (or 80% so as the French claim) and don't think too much else about it. Food is the way to fuel your body.

For me it has become a rotating pattern of sequential dieting initiatives. The irony is that at the start of a new such initiative (or eating plans as I am trying to call them now) I find myself browsing the supermarket, not for a sensible balanced weekly shop, but instead for things for me to eat that are consistent with my current plan of attack. 

It amuses me to look into my cupboards and see residual evidence of a catalogue of diets past. 

There is oat bran (from the Dukan days), gluten free stuff (from gluten free diet), slimfast bars (from SF diet obv), surplus eggs, cold meat and yoghurt (low carb), green tea (6 wks to OMG) and sugar free jelly sachets, tinned fruit and snak a jacks from calorie counting plans and frozen ready meals from the last Weight Watchers assault.

It is a design fault with diets that you immediately pay so much attention to food and eating. As I load my basket with low calorie options: melon, tomatoes, carrot sticks, soups, ryvita, tortilla wraps (to make "pizza") and snacks (chocolate mini mini rolls)  I am surprised to find so many diet friendly options. In fact having so many in stock makes it easy to forget 

1. Not to eat them all at once 

2. No food is 'free'. Everything has calories

3. Having more will not make me less

The aim of the game has to be to focus on what I am not eating, rather than what I can eat. I'll repeat that mainly for my own benefit:

Focus on what I am not eating, rather than what I can eat. Here goes for another week.

Eating to Live, or Living to Eat

Although happy to admit I'm in the latter camp,  this is unfortunate. No matter how good your eating plan is, how well you are following it or how immersed you are in its foibles, to succeed there must be one underlying principle:food cannot be the centre of your life. 

One cannot spend their days eating, planning what to eat and wondering when they will next eat. Eating needs to be superfluous to life (in the main, special occasions excepted). To maintain our desired weight we need to move into the 'Eat to Live' camp and fill our lives with something else. Anything else.

 I am trying to move away from the food, physically and metaphorically, and stop eating when it is just "something to do". 

So what am I doing instead? Anything really but things I've found helpful are doing jigsaws, tidying cupboards, de-cluttering corner of junk, doing my nails or surfing the web. I'm often tempted to bake something but this option keeps me in the kitchen and keeps food foremost in my mind. Baking anything always leads to over-eating at some point; if not the same day then usually the next, when everyone else has lost interest in the cake and I'm left alone 'not wanting it to go to waste'. Or waist.

It's not easy to change to an 'Eat to Live' mentality, especially as we get older and any social life remaining revolves around eating and drinking but change we must (try). Food should not be the main event. 

Like many things, this sounds easier said than done, but if it doesn't challenge you, it wont change you. 

Metabolism Moans

The truth of the matter is that, whether I like it or not, I have a slow metabolism. Very slow. I am short too. Some would say very short but the bottom line is I need very little food to maintain my status quo weight-wise. 

If I overeat through higher calorie choices or additional food, I put on weight. Very easily. Simple as that.

It is not fair. No, it is definitely not fair. But that's life. Now I know the reality, it's up to me what to do with it. We each make our own choices in this short life, some however, are harder than others.

Yet again it all boils down to what you really want? Do I want it enough to do what I know is necessary to stay slim-ish?

Yes, most of the time is the honest answer. Sometimes it's easier than others but the most important point is that I keep trying. Only when you give up have you lost the battle.

Oh the Pain to Maintain (that coveted weight loss)

I have lost my way recently with my dieting efforts. It has been compounded by an increasing acceptance of the weight I am presently at. For those of you like myself who want full disclosure of the numbers we are talking about, I am 9 stone 8 lbs, 134 lbs or 60.9 kg. The advanced class will want to know too that my height is 157cm (or 5'2") giving me a BMI of 24.7.

For once I am going to stop aiming for 'thin' and accept my present weight (slim-ish).

Maintenance of any weight loss is hard though. It requires the same amount of continual effort as weight loss, but without any of the rewards. 

A 'good' week is rewarded by staying the same (STS). There are no longer comments of 'have you lost weight?', 'your face looks thinner' yet we're supposed to be happy with this result. That's one of the reasons I thought that blogging about this new road I'm following might help my mind to follow it too. 

It's pure hunkering down for the long term that's required and that is what I need to do now.  I've wasted many years of my life being over weight and regularly vow to waste no more time wishing I was thinner.

Now I've reached a weight I am comfortable at, it's realistic and it should be maintainable, it's time to walk the walk.

All I've got to do is keep my eye on the prize,  play the long game, and keep trying to win this war on weight. Are you with me?