Current weight: 283.4 lbs,
Total weight loss: 22.4 lbs. (+4 pounds since yesterday, agh!!)
As I mentioned earlier, yesterday had both good and bad news.
The good news was that I had another Non-Scale Victory and fit into a smaller pair of jeans — a size 20! Hooray!!
The bad news was that this morning, I was up 4 pounds because of a mini-binge yesterday afternoon. This was the first time I have significantly eaten off program, against my 8 guidelines. And I was really bummed that it had happened, especially when I stepped on the scale this morning.
The First Mini-Binge.
I’m really not sure how, or why, it happened. I was a bit stressed and tired yesterday afternoon. But this isn’t that unusual for me so that couldn’t have been the only trigger.
In the morning, I had been doing well – just had my usual tea with cream. And then I had lunch with some friends, which was a delicious and filling Cobb salad with plenty of vegetables.
But maybe I wasn’t that full or satisfied, since I decided to eat the chips that came with the lunch. And that was the beginning of the end for the day…
After that, I ended up eating a toasted wheat bagel with butter and strawberry jelly, two pieces of coffee cake, a couple pieces of fruit and yogurt, and a few bites of cake. This was all topped off with some more chips. (One interesting observation – even though the cake tasted good, it was way too sweet, so I could only eat a few bites. This never would have happened in the past, so maybe my tastebuds are changing!)
Now by my standards, this is not a huge quantity of food. But the problem is that I wasn’t actually hungry while I was eating. It was the familiar loss of control while eating that was the main issue. A loss of control that seems to start with a trigger. For me, the trigger usually involves some type of carbohydrate/sugar (+/- a fat) followed by an active decision to completely “let go”. I can definitely see why some people feel addicted to certain foods.
Usually, when this happens I “let go” for the entire rest of day, only to restart the following morning. Since I “messed up”, I may as well enjoy myself and just restart fresh the next day, right?? This probably stems from a lifetime of starting diets in the morning. Especially Monday mornings. Meaning if this happens on a Saturday morning, I “let go” for the rest of the weekend and just wait for Monday morning. Yes, that Magical Monday Morning…
Fortunately, and surprisingly, the afternoon eating didn’t last for too long – probably a total of about 45 minutes. After the last chips, I found myself uncomfortably full, and stopped eating. Looking back, I see that there may have been some positives taken from this experience.
Can these be positives?
- The cake was too sweet. As mentioned above, I could only eat a few bites of cake. Normally, I would have finished an entire piece (or two, or three…). But I found it to be way too sweet and after a few bites had to stop. I think my threshold for sweetness is changing.
- I stayed in nutritional ketosis. This morning, when I checked my urine ketones to see if my ketogenic diet had been affected, I was surprised that it had not. Despite the larger quantity of carbs that I consumed yesterday, I was still in nutritional ketosis. This is probably because the number of carbohydrates that I consumed wasn’t enough to entirely fill my carbohydrate reserves (my glycogen). And this is a good thing. Of course, if I had checked my urine ketones right afterwards, they may have been negative.
- I stopped eating. This probably sounds funny, but after about that 45 minutes, I stopped eating. I started to feel bloated, and full, and just yucky. So I stopped – and as I mentioned above, this usually doesn’t happen. In fact in the past whenever I went off program, I would usually use it as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted or craved for the rest of the day. After all, today was already ruined, so I may as well just start again tomorrow.
Consequences
And of course, there are the consequences. The most obvious one is that I gained quite a bit of weight — although all mainly fluids — since yesterday.
And despite my excitement yesterday morning of fitting into a smaller pair of jeans, I still had a hard time sticking to my program yesterday. Unfortunately, my progress and enthusiasm weren’t enough to keep me from falling into old habits yesterday.
I wonder if this will always be the case, or if my relationship with food can evolve enough to get past this. Will carbohydrates/sugar always trigger this type of behavior? It is only certain types of foods that are a problem? Is there a threshold I will pass when I can start tolerating these foods? So many questions.
Regardless, I won’t focus too much on the scale or on what happened yesterday. After all, part of my wellness endeavor included forgiving myself and not letting perfect be the enemy of the good.
So for now, I will stand up, brush myself off, and continue on my journey towards health and wellness.
Day #55:
Current weight: 283.4 lbs
Total weight loss: 22.4 lbs
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