Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Long Time, No Weigh!

Get it?  Instead of "long time, no see"?  I'm so clever!  It must be all the glucose feeding my brain.

Okay, seriously now.  I haven't weighed myself since June 18th, and I have no plans to do so until Friday of this week, and even then I may not.  Why?  Well, because I feel fat.  Do I think I'm actually fatter?  No, not at all.  Everything that fit before still fits, everything that was loose is still just as loose.  It's clearly psychological - I know that I haven't been following my healthy eating plan as strictly as usual, so I automatically feel as if my face looks fat and I have puffy fingers.  It's just the way it is.

I'd been doing fairly well up until the holiday weekend.  I'd been getting in my 5-9 fruits and vegetables every day, all of my water, and staying in a reasonable calorie range.  Reasonable meaning I'd eat about 800 throughout the day and then just eat dinner without counting.  Dinner was never anything like a bucket of fat smeared with butter, so I wasn't worried.  But see, then the holiday weekend happened, and holiday weekends are baaaaad.  Think beer, mixed drinks, wine, desserts, chips, and ice cream.  Nothing in gigantic proportions, but still more than I should have consumed.  What can I say?  If I get a taste of it I miss it.  And I really gave myself license to eat this weekend (up to and including Monday!).

Still though...am I worried?  No, I'm not.  Am I deluding myself?  No, I'm not.  I'm not going to gain weight by eating like a "normal" person.  "Normal" people allow themselves to indulge and don't worry about packing on 10 pounds in one sitting.  "Normal" people know better, and I have to remember that.  They know that the give-and-take will be what matters - indulge today, eat healthier tomorrow.  Even Steven (Seinfeld reference!).  It's all about a give and take, but for us dieters, give and take almost seems like a sin.  Clearly we will gain weight if we don't stick to 1200 calories a day that come from only fruits, vegetables, complex carbs, and a touch of protein.  Obviously we will beef up to critical mass if we miss a day of exercise or don't drink all of our water or even - *GASP* - eat dessert more than once a week.  This will derail us completely and we will gain back all 5, 10, 20, 50+ pounds we lost.  We're so unlucky.

Does anyone else find this extreme black-and-white thinking horrifying?  Gosh, how much more punitive can we get than when we are chastising ourselves for not being perfect eaters?  And look, I'm not saying this to give us all carte blanche to just eat through our pantries or refrigerators or cupboards of shame.  I'm not talking about either extreme here - neither the perfect nor the wretched.  I'm talking about sometimes relaxing and finding the middle.  And let's face it, the middle doesn't always help us lose weight, right?  But the middle is what helps us maintain, and maintaining is a valuable lesson in and of itself.

Voltaire said, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."  Voltaire was awesome for that, and that's become a quote that I apply to many areas of my life.

And before I forget, the lovely Lauren over at Piece of the Pie commented on my last post and wanted to know how dinner was.  Truth is, Lauren, I don't remember!  LOL  It's been so long since I've posted that I can't recall a damn thing.  But when I have a fabulous dinner sometime this week I'll give a full report.  :)

Happy Tuesday!!!

3 comments:

Alyxmyself said...

please read this

http://additin.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-is-macro-nutrient-profile.html

make sure you get what you need everyday...then you don't have to be everlastingly counting calories!

comment, start a discussion, as you like :)

Barbara said...

Oh, gosh ... you really nailed it. I've gone through those "black and white" periods. I was either an angel and kept to my diet perfectly, or I slid just a little and was the devil incarnate.

And you're absolutely correct about how we can feel fatter just by knowing we slipped. I think that's why I feel so stuffed after a meal that has some "decadent" items = even when I eat only a tiny bit of it.

It'll be interesting to see how it goes when you finally get back on the scale. Hope you're a LOSER (in this only!)

no_limitations said...

I just updated my status on Spark saying something to the effect of "I'm either obsessed or lazy" I hate that. I TRIED these last 2 weeks to not be AS obsessive to see if it might help with my food addiction, and I ended up just being lazy -and all I did was maintain - which is AWESOME... but I'm going back to being obsessed and losing weight at least for the next few weeks :)