Went to my boyfriend's best friend's parent's house for dinner last night. I didn't count calories because I didn't want to be doing mental arithmetic all night, so I just gave it an upper-limit estimate of 3000 calories. There were some cheesy appetizers, a plate of actual dinner that was moderate (probably not more than 600 cals), a couple glasses of wine and 2 mugs of cider with brandy, and not even a whole piece of pie because I was too stuffed by then, but also some chocolates and caramels.
The aforementioned parents have been on a diet recently. It was actually quite strange to sit there and hear them talking about their diet. Apparently they've been doing MediFast for about a month and have lost 14 and 13 pounds respectively. I was pretty quiet through most of the discussion, but I asked a few questions, said I didn't really like the idea of prepackaged, engineered food, and volunteered that through simple calorie counting I've lost 35 pounds in 24 weeks.
It did make me think about how I need a kick start. Recently it's been hard to keep my calories down. When I exercise more I get more hungry, and I'm often hungry not long after I've eaten what has been a normal meal for the past several months. The past three days, however, have been instructive.
On Tuesday, I started off with a sensible breakfast, packed a wrap, and planned to get a coffee at school. When I went for my coffee, however, I got suckered by the donuts and got a maple bar, which turned out to have a colossal 460 calories. Eating when I'm not actually hungry screws everything up, so I ended up eating my wrap during my first class. I then had nothing else with me to eat, so I subsisted until dinnertime on more coffee. After dinner, I was still SO hungry, and also had been wanting ice cream for about a week, so I finally said fuck it and ate most of a pint of ice cream.
On Wednesday, I felt like all my bad choices had been spent the previous day, and found no difficulty in achieving a low calorie count. I had breakfast, brought two snacks to school, ate them when I was hungry, and worked out after class (usually I work out in the morning, but I switched up my schedule on account of the weather). Then I went out to dinner and had a salad. My calorie count was very low and my deficit was quite good.
Yesterday, of course, I ate tons because I wanted some of everything and I expected that. But I was reminded of how heavy and full and really not so pleasant it is to overeat.
So, the take home lessons are: I don't want to go back to overeating, I am still capable of eating low-calorie comfortably, and maybe if I have a frustrating craving, giving in really will get it out of my system. The questions are: why did I get derailed by a donut right after a perfectly good breakfast, and is it possible for me to schedule things so I work out in the afternoon?
I need to find some information on set-points and how to re-set them. I think it's pretty clear that my body is not used to weighing less than 150 pounds, it really never has since reaching my current height, and while the first 35 pounds were easy, now it's saying "hey, WTF are you doing?" It's equally clear that borderline-overweight, over 30% fat is not a state in which I'm going to just leave myself. If my set-point is between 150-165 pounds, then my set-point is screwed up, and there must be a way to fix it.
And I need to pick some kind of kick-start. One thing I can do is re-institute stricter calorie targets and try to take advantage of the good day I had this week as a model: eat breakfast, 2 snacks, workout to boost my endorphins later in the day and moderate dinner. But I'm also thinking of something that can barrel through these next, say, 5 pounds. I know low-carb diets are supposed to be a good kick-start, and I've read people who say they maintained everything they lost, despite the fact that the only theory I've heard about the quick beginning loss is glycogen depletion. MediFast is expensive as fuck, but the general idea of designer diet food is another possibility. And finally, I'm thinking about a "cleanse." Winter, admittedly, is not the easiest time to do this, but cleanses are helpful in a number of ways: they usually force low calories, they involve foods that are high in water, fiber, and antioxidants, all of which are healthy, and they supposedly clean out your system. I'm skeptical of the idea that there's anything hanging out in your colon that can be cleaned out, but that's where many of the claims lie. I am much more sympathetic to the idea that by giving your body only light, unprocessed plant foods, and also certain detoxifying herbs, metabolic processes are given a rest and made more efficient. So that's another idea.
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