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
