Blergh.

Was hungrier than usual today, so I decided to make it an intentional indulgence day. The theory of an indulgence day is that the extra calories rev up my metabolism, help me to burn more calories, and freak out my body so it doesn't get too used to any one thing.

So I ate lunch today. Yummy.

And then I ate chocolate and nuts.

And now I feel like crap. Like crap. Was that particular indulgence worth it, it ask you? I think not. I'm no bulemic—oh my josh, I'd rather do anything than throw up—but at times like this I feel the tiniest twinge of sympathy with them. Where's my undo button?

Square one.

I'd moan and thrash about having to start over yet again, but I suppose instead I should rejoice. Right? Opportunities to do things we want to, even things we've done before (sigh) keep coming around. Yay. And right now I have an opportunity to turn my eating life around.

In addition to my renewed vigor for exercise, I've changed up what I'm doing with food. I agree with Brad Pilon that a really valid way to cut out calories is just not to eat sometimes. Food is merely fuel for my body, though I cling to it desperately for a number of other reasons (joy, celebration, socializing, comforting, etc.). Here are two short posts that underline what I'm trying to say:
Food is just fuel
Food is food, it's that simple
So right now I'm fasting one meal every single day: lunch.

• My blood sugar stays a little more stable if I'm eating every day.
  
• I don't get so desperately hungry, because I know I get dinner.
  
• (This might be the best part.) My daily weight loss graph line is a lot more stable than with full 24-hour fasts.

When I was doing full-day fasts with Eat Stop Eat, on a fast day I'd lose 4+ pounds, and then on my following eating day gain back 3.8. Weighing once a week the general weight trend was downward, but it sure went up and down and everywhere daily. This way I get to see a lot gentler but more constant feedback. I'm not losing 4 pounds in one day (shucks!) but I'm not gaining back, either.

(For four whole days now, let's see how it goes in the longer run.)

Here's to new beginnings! Again!

The comfortable, slippery slope

I really let my strength training go by the wayside. Truth is, I like cardio better. So I rebelled. And then I fell off a ladder painting the house and couldn't exercise for a while (but not as long as I didn't exercise, you know how it is). Meanwhile, I ate and ate and ate, lots more calories than I needed.

So where am I today? Horrified. I'd have to lose ten pounds before I could even tell you how much I weigh. I've only weighed this much once before in my non-pregnant life, after the birth of my third baby. I don't know why I struggled so to lose weight after she was born, but I know that the pictures of me holding her as a baby don't even look like me.

If I took pictures of me now, I'd probably think the same.

This was truly a case of letting myself go, of eating whatever I want and damn the consequences. Which only works for so long, then I look in the mirror and the consequences damn me.

Exercised this morning, did strength training on my legs and my abs. I don't know how I got so wimpy, but at least I made the first fledgling steps.

So busy, no posting

Things are going pretty well. I'm painting the exterior of my house* so exercise has gone by the wayside for a couple of weeks now, but I honestly think that I'll probably be done with that [SQUEE SQUEE SQUEE] today, and I'll pick up where I left off. Doing better with intermittent fasting, it isn't the mindgame it had been. And I'm loving the calorie cycling, in that twice a week I have enough calories to eat pretty much anything I want. That, so far, is making all the difference.

Yesterday and today I weighed 150.0. I suspect on Saturday morning's weigh in I'll be below 150. I'm excited about that, because 150 is my threshold above which I do not want to go. So that means that I'm really just starting the rest of the work I need to do right now.

But at least I've begun!

__________________________
*The painting project has sucked all my time. I haven't blogged in the longest time. But I still have to eat, right? So I'm still plugging away.

All sorts of detours

I've been all over the map lately with diet. I tried my own slim fast diet, in which I was going to eat fresh fruits/vegs for two meals (approx 250 calories/meal), and then a "sensible dinner". That lasted about a week.

Then I was going to eat exactly 1200 calories per day. That lasted probably two days. I upped it to 1500 calories per day. That one, though easier, didn't even get off the ground; I was too busy eating everything in sight. I haven't done a serious fast in a mighty long time, longer than two months. My periodic fasts just became mind games, in which my mind tried to convince me to eat after only one missed meal, or two missed meals. My mind always won. As I was consuming an entire day of calories in that make-up meal, I kept mentally chanting, "Food isn't bad! It's not wrong to eat!"

My problem is that I want to lose weight fast. Don't we all? I was 140 pounds once. I want to weigh 130, but I want to be starting from 140, not from where I am. So I'll "hurry up" and lose the first ten, and then keep going. Or something stupid like that.

I clicked a SparkPeople.com link over on Facebook, which took me to a blog post entitled My Top 10 Weight Loss Mistakes: What are Yours? She mentioned wanting to lose the weight too fast, and it was like a lightbulb went off for me. While it's true I want to be 140 today, or tomorrow, or next week, I can't do it that way. I have to do it sensibly. The time will pass anyway; I just have to make the most of the passing time.

So I began exercising again. I'd dropped cardio (which I love) in favor of weight training (which I believe has many more benefits, but I don't enjoy it nearly so well). So when I dropped weight training because of schedule difficulties, I wasn't doing anything at all. Now I'm doing both again.

And after my failed attempts at self-slim-fast, I began researching diets again. The diets that will work for me are somewhat limited with my mostly-vegan lifestyle, but I checked out a number of them anyway. Most were gimmicks or required supplements or wanted me to eat more times a day than I can, etc.

And then I paused. I'd just finished running and was stretching, and I had a moment of quiet to just ponder me.

And I realized, the only two diets that have ever worked for me are counting calories at SparkPeople.com, and Eat Stop Eat with the periodic fasting. Both are about eating fewer calories, because I'm obviously consuming more calories than I need. There is no way to out-exercise a bad diet, when it is so easy to consume calories and so hard to burn them off. I can eat 1000 calories in 20 minutes. I can burn about 60 calories in the same amount of time if I'm running uphill (which, needless to say, I don't).

Reality checks are good, right?

I've decided to count calories again, with the fun twist of calorie-cycling. This is where my calories average out to 1500/day over a week, but individual days vary. Yesterday I got 1700 calories, which seemed like a full out indulgence day. I ate literally everything I wanted to and barely got all those calories in. (Mind you, I didn't go to P.F. Chang's. That would have made it a bit easier.) Today I get 1300 and I have to be a little more careful. But eating everything yesterday makes it easier to leave out the really fun stuff today, and I know I get another 1700 day this week.

But when I stepped on the scale Monday morning I got a bad case of sticker shock. I weighed the second most I've ever weighed in my life non-pregnant. 157 pounds. I swear, just two weeks ago I was 149? Which is still way too much, but 157?!?!

So I began my Monday with an unexpected Eat Stop Eat fast. I exercised, I drank, and I didn't eat. And wonder of wonders, I made it through beautifully. No mind games.

So now I'm doing a combination, I guess, of the only two methods (which are branches of the same thing) which have ever worked for me.

I'm happy. I've already seen a 4-pound drop on the scale, and it's just two days later. With a few higher-calorie days per week, it feels very doable. SparkPeople is my old friend.

It won't be tomorrow, but I'll see 140 again. And hopefully after that, I'll keep going to 130.

My brain is hungrier than my stomach is.

Fascinating article about how our brains sabotage our efforts to lose weight.

Not that I needed to be told; any time I've given in and ended a fast before I had planned to, any time I've gone off my calorie-calculated food plan for the day when I thought I had it under control, it was my brain talking me into it, not my stomach. My brain wants the pleasure of eating even more than my body does.

Have not had a good week with the calories, with the sugar-free, with the portion control, nor anything else; but I have managed my first real fast in weeks today. Let's hope I can turn it around and find myself some control.