1. Once upon a time, I birthed my seventh baby a year and a half before my 20-year high school reunion. Knowing how long it can take to lose baby weight, I started right in on the efforts. Mainly used calorie counting at sparkpeople.com. Benefitted from breastfeeding: was able to eat plenty of food every day and still create a calorie deficit. Succeeded. Weighed my pre-seven-babies weight six months before that reunion. Maintained it for well over a year. (See all posts having to do with my experiences with sparkpeople.com here.)
2. Gained a little weight. Counting calories didn't work quite as well for me when I didn't have those extra breastfeeding calories. Tried a different method, Eat Stop Eat with periodic fasts. The first few fasts were difficult, but once my body was used to going without food for a period, I didn't even feel hunger pangs on fasting days. Could lose up to 4 pounds in a single fast, but once I resumed eating I'd have two-and-a-half or so of those back. Was maintainable because I could eat the foods I loved, in portions. Lost 2 or a little more pounds a week. Got back to pre-seven-babies weight. Maintained it for probably 4-5 months. (See all posts having to do with my experiences with Eat Stop Eat here, and there are a lot since this blog was started to chronicle my progress through it.)
3. Hub got laid off. Stress. Gained a little weight, then more. Tried fasting, but the emotions and stress were too high so my fasts were shorter and my eats were bigger. Didn't really lose.
4. Didn't want to count calories or fast; didn't see any real results when I was counting calories or fasting. Nearly a year had passed, hub's work was steady, stress was much lower. Tried something new: EET, which is all about the timing of meals. I did have limited success, even though I insisted that the program conform to me rather than me conforming to the program. I absolutely insisted that I must be able to eat the same foods that I made for the family for dinner in the evenings. Wanted to be an example for those beautiful seven children. Mr. EET Jon Pearlstone worked with me, trying to tweak the plan, and we did see slow and small progress. I never reached my goal weight because I had to drop out when finances became tight. (See one more post on my prior EET experience here.)
5. Floundered on my own, trying parts and entireties of everything I'd done before. Lost a little, gained. Gained a bit more, lost a little. Worked out faithfully for a bit, took a while off. Ended up, nine months after dropping out of EET, at my highest adult weight ever, exactly equivalent to my full-term pregnant weight.
6. Beloved sister began losing weight. Fast. Taking names and kicking it to the curb. And I thought, I have to do this now, so that I can get small while she gets small. Pride wouldn't let me be the bigger sister. So I started exercising, eating less carbs. Cut out virtually all sugar, thanks to a challenge from a friend who had begun the Paleo diet. (See my prior struggles with sugar here.) Ate very healthy meals, lots of veggies and protein for breakfast and lunch, family meal for dinner, fasting 2 meals 2-3 times per week. I was dropping a pound a week or so. Sister was losing 4-5/week. Lost about 12 pounds of the 30 I wanted to lose. After months of watching sister and Paleo diet friend shed pounds very quickly while I went slow as a snail, I decided: there is something about this eating dinner with my family that isn't working. Something about my carb intake that isn't working. I borrowed my sister's book, The 17-Day Diet.
(Thanks for sticking with me! We're almost to present day!)
7. Began the first 17 days of very low (for me) carb diet. Did I lose weight? Yes. Multiple pounds per week, which felt like a miracle because my loss had been so slow and full of stalls and tiny fractional regains. Also, I was hungry all the time—hungrier by far than when I fasted and ate nothing. (True story.) I lost all energy in the afternoon—after about 2 p.m. I was all wrung out and exhausted and had nothing left to give, and even food didn't recharge me. Cooking dinner for the fam felt like a monumental energy expenditure. In the first 10 days I lost another 6 pounds, though, so the loss made the low energy and the hollowed-out hunger doable. But then I ran out of steam. I had to add in some carbs.
The first two days of eating carbs were like a free-for-all. I was just downing everything I could get my hands on. Of course the number on the scale crept up a couple of pounds, both from actual intake of too many calories and from retained water. I went back to the very low carbs for another 5 or so days. Then I realized several things:
- I was not eating what my family ate for dinner, and the kids were surviving. Most often they didn't even notice what I had on my plate.
- Not eating carbs at night was working, in terms of losing weight.
- Not eating carbs ever was NOT working for me, and would not be sustainable in the long term. Or even really in the short term—it took all my willpower and a few cheat days to get through the first 17-day cycle.
- All my objections to the EET program had been done away with. I could, in fact, eat something different than the fam at night. I could, in fact, eat very low carbs at some meals. If I could eat carbs for lunch and maintain my energy through the day and still lose, I could do EET. Long-term.
So for my second 17-day cycle, I decided to skip right over the info in the book and try EET again.
And you know what?
MIRACLE.
I have energy now, all day long.
I am not hollowly hungry, ever. One step further, I am satisfied! Because I am eating the foods that I love at lunchtime. I no longer look at food and think, "Looks delicious. Can't ever have it."
If something crosses my path that I shouldn't eat, I can resist it fairly easily. Because I can eat it tomorrow at lunchtime. No deprivation, just timing.
I am literally just three days into this. This isn't my final check-in or anything. But this morning I had my lowest weigh-in since item #2 up there, and that's after having eating literally the most calorie-laden food I cook for lunch yesterday.
Suddenly eating is fun again. And whereas my upcoming anniversary weekend (married 20 years on Monday 11 June! yeah!) was going to be a drag without any of the foods I loved, now I look forward to having a couple of special meals.
Will report back on how it goes.
