Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Let me just say this about that!


Good morning happy people! Another dreary January morning over here in Pennsylvania. Kinda grey, no sun to speak of.  We are supposed to reach 54 here today, with even higher temperatures this weekend. Hopefully that will bring the sun out of hiding. That's good because the massive undecorating of the outdoor Christmas lights and decorations will take place this weekend. It's always good to do this on a warm weekend.

I had to jump on my laptop this morning because I have some thoughts regarding something I think perplexes all of us trying to maintain or lose weight, and that s a rapid, and sometimes overnight change in the scale.I'm talking up or down in numbers.  
 
I am curiously following Dawn as she embarks on her Atkins journery. Dawn, as well as several other lovely ladies ( Amber, Rosalie, Kay, Beth, Ashley) are very aware of what it takes for them to lose weight and they have met their goals. Me, not so much. I lost twenty pounds, gained some back after the wedding, and remain on the journey to reach my ultimate goal. But I still get confused  how what we eat or do no eat affects that number on the scale.
I think it is very much different for everyone. I don't think having a glass of wine or something carby or sweet the night before will actually make a difference 8 to 12 hours later in your real weight. It may show up a few days later, but what I think people are seeing the next day after they have a real "good" day or a real "bad" day is water retention or water release. Yes that's weight, but true fat gain and true fat loss can't happen that quick.




Here's a food confession for you. I ususally jump on the scale each morning. I make Wednesday my official weigh day, but I keep a close track on the other days. Yesterday I jumped on the scale, naked in the morning before breakfast  (don't try to visualize this!) and my shower, and I was a the highest I've been all holidy season. I was bummed. You see there is this direct correlation between my weight and my mood. Does that happen to you too?

Nevertheless, I went about my day. I'm still nursing that torn hamstring/knee injury and yesterday it was really hurting alot. I had my usual eggs and flax toast for breakfast, then I met my son for lunch, and had a chicken sandwich, minus the roll and some ginger slaw. Then I went to my brothers' house to be with the kids. The land of forbidden foods is a hard place to be a few times a week.
 
 I know I should prepare and bring stuff I can eat, but I didn't and ended up picking.  I looked in the pantry and found some pretzels, some pistachio nuts, and a piece of peppermint bark. I can look back now and see that I was bummed at my weight that morning, and then I get to my brothers house and got really emotional ( Sunday was the one year anniversary of Beth's death.) So what did I do, but use food to comfort myself. I wish I could see this happening while it's happening, but I don't!

It gets worse. I start taking down their tree ornaments, end up staying until 8:00 helping my brother get this 12 foot tree out of the house, make some dinner for my nephew, help with the clean up of everything and walk in my door at 8:45. That would have been a good time to pack it all in and head up to bed. But no, I pour myself a glass of red wine, and heat up some pasta with homemade alfredo sauce, chicken, mushrooms and asapargus. I made the pasta at the urging of my son and had it ready for their dinner last nght. Well I served myself up a good ole' portion of that pasta, and went in to my carb como eating this delicious concoction.

And it gets worse. My son loves my homemade chocolate chip cookies. I make up the batter and leave it in the fridge. He makes himself a batch whenever he wants some fresh cookies and I don't have to deal with any temptation. Plus I have the sugar thing licked for good right? Ahhh...not so much. Last night I had a warm, gooey, fresh from the oven chocolate chip cookie....at  9 PM!!!! WHAT AM I DOING TO MYSE'LF????? Why does a person with a perfectly sane mind, do insane things at times?

This morning, I have to face the crimes I've committed. I get up and get on the scale and it's 4 LBS lighter then yesterday!! WHAT???? I go get my 10 lb weight and put it on the scale. It weighs in at 9.9 lbs. So the scale is pretty accurate. I get on again, same number, and once more. It's still the same.
 
So here's the mystery. How could I eat that many carbs and sugar, and wake up weighing less? Well, it's just how my body handled this deluge of carbs and sugar, and I know that I will see this show up probably around Friday in the numbers. If you eat more calories than your body can use, it has to eventually store them. Even though we don't count calories on the BFC, just by eliminating processed carbs and sugars, we are taking in less calories then we did eating our old way. And what we do take in is used more efficiently than the "white stuff."

So what's my point? My point is that scientifically we know that any drastic change up or down in the scale in an 24 hour period is usually fluctuations in hormones and water levels in our body. One cookie or glass of wine isn't going to make a big difference overnight. Cumulative damage from many days of eating the wrong things or many days of eating healthy is what will move the scale in the wrong direction or in the right direction.

 I will see the damage from my eating binge yesterday, but if I jump right back on track and even limit some of my carbs then next few days, hopefully I can neutralize it. I would have expected those carbs to grab and hold alot of water and cause that scale to be way up this morning. Chemically that didn't happen in my body for some reason. The problem happens when you see what I saw, and think, 'hey, I can eat that, I lost weight when I did that before.' This is how we trick ourselves. It will catch up with me.
 
All of our bodies react differently and that is the key to understanding what it takes to lose wight and maintain it. Don't let the scale fool you one way or the other. Don't be foolish and directly correlate every bite you eat to what you see on the scale immediately. Like anything, what you do repeatedly will have the most influence on your ultimate outcome.
 
Sending hugs and love. Also thanks for the breakfast comments on the last post. There were some excellent breakfast ideas for those looking for some new ways to shake up breakfast. I'll post them in the next blog post. XO
 
Thought for the day: We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle

11 comments:

  1. yep so true! :)
    The bfc is not for me no matter how much I try to trick myself that it is! excercising and eating foods in moderation are what works for me!

    For example this morning I had oatmeal with protein powder, bluberries banana and almond milk and I am going to the gym in 2 hours. That works for me! I am seeing food as fuel for my body and fuel that needs to be put to use (excercising). Calories in calories out :)

    Not everyone is the same and that is why diets are meant for everyone. Like the bfc :)

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    1. Ashely, you are very in tune with what works for you. I think you should do what you know works. We all seem to know deep down inside what seems right for our body. I for one would love to give up wheat, but I know that I just can't do that for a lifetime. Some like Trina, have felt so much better that it makes her want to do it forever. Being in tune with our bodies and what they are telling us is the real key to leading a healthy life at a healthy weight. Keep on doing whatever works. The support we give each other is what's important! Also love the idea of putting protein powder in the oatmeal. Does it change the texture at all and do you just stir it in and add water?

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    2. oops, sorry I spelled Ashley wrong! Typing too fast!

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    3. actually it IS really satisfying. I add 1/2 scoop of whey portein to ONLY 1/4 cup of oats! and keeps me satisfied till lunch about 4-5 hours! that includes me workout in between those two meal so it keeps me running and satisfied :)
      I would suggest you start of with 1/4 cup oats and 1 full scoop of proitein .A good quality protein would be jar robb or About time protein powder. It really helps with hunger :)

      the whey actually makes "more oatmeal" it thickens it up so you get "more" than you would if you just had oatmeal with milk..

      I add 1/4 oats, 1/2 milk, and 1/2 scoop protein :)

      I agree with that whole wheat stuff and bfc. I am trying to find that TUNE to MY BODY! This bfc may work for rosalie, but it's not one diet fits all. whatever works for us, we should stick to it and just support each other :)

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  2. I love this post! On Monday morning I was up 2 lbs and at my 2nd all time high! I hadn't even been that bad, so I was not a happy camper! Tuesday, the scale is back down and if I put the 2 weights in myfitnesspal, I would have been a 1.6 lb loser. I go by how my clothes fit. I haven't gained that much really, but my waist is bigger because like you, I haven't been able to exercise. I am up early this morning to go to Zumba. Wish me luck! The roads are solid ice and the paper hasn't even got here today:( So do I really want to venture out? I can have this conversation with myself over and over!
    I will always think that calories matter, that's why I don't snack, it is just extra calories. I know that I eat a lot of butter and I do have heavy whipping cream in my coffee, so I don't think fat is going to kill us. Truly to me it is about changing the bad habits to good habits. We will never die from not having sugar again!
    You have a right to your emotions and blogging about it should help a bit. Just get back to it today!
    You will get to where you want to be, if you really want to be there! I think that is half the battle, deciding the priority of being "thin". Truly, if it isn't a health issue because you would be considered obese, is it really because you want to be thin? Or because society tells you it is best to be thin?

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  3. You know that scale is a tricky one. It fools me from time to time too, but like you I do weigh myself every day. I really need to know if and what I am doing wrong. I surely wouldn't want to weigh myself once a week or 2 and then be totally surprised and feel like a pig.
    I am sorry for how you felt this weekend and know what you are going thru, try hard not to let those feelings follow us thru to out eating.
    Have a great day and I hope it warms up. :-)

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  4. Very great that you were down 4 lbs, even though you weren't following the diet. That scale can be evil so I avoid it at all costs. I don't even let the doctor weigh me because they always tell me what it says and I just don't want my day and mood depending on that silly number. I just go by how my clothes feel because I get too obsessed with the numbers.
    Good Luck with taking down all of those lights.....STAY WARM!
    Carey

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  5. I listened to Dr. Robert Lustig last night who said the scale is USELESS! He went into some detail why a calorie is not a calorie and why what we weight doesn't matter. What matters (according to him) is our waist dimension. I think the scale makes us over analyse everything we do and eat.

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    1. Dr. Phinney has also said that we have a very NATURAL shift of plus or minus 4 pounds at any given time. Another reason the scale can deceive us.

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  6. I know that I have never been up OR down pounds that quickly! My problem right now is that my scale doesn't seem to budge either way!! But in the past, when the scale did move, it was slowly. I still have not reached my goal in almost two years time, but I still want to. One thing I have been doing differently is weighing myself everyday. In the beginning I truly only weighed once a week for precisely the reason you've stated. The scale reading might change my attitude to a "what difference does it make" attitude if I don't see immediate results. Once a week MADE me stick to an eating plan for a whole week, before I made any tweaks or changes to it. I should start doing that again.

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  7. You are so right - we are all different, and have to figure out what's right for each and every one. I weigh in every day because for me it is an important marker of how I'm doing. The scale vary rarely surprises me, like it did to you, so it is always informative in one way or another. Have a great day!

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