Coming down slowly

This morning I was at 162.2. That's 1.8 pounds since I got back on track on Monday. So, I guess that doesn't really count as "slowly," except I feel like this weight is "fake" weight. I know it's not, really, but I gained it all in a couple of days on our trip, so I feel like it should come back off instantly. I've still got 2.6 pounds to go to get back to where I was before we left for our trip, and I'll probably get there just in time to leave for Toronto in a couple of weeks. But, maybe since Marilu is IF'ing, maybe we'll be able to stick to it together. Not that Marilu needs to lose weight, but if she's IF'ing, it makes it a lot easier on me!

Good so far

Today has been a fairly good day so far ... now, to not mess it up in the two hours before I go to sleep. I skipped breakfast and left to go eat lunch around 1 ... didn't actually start eating until around 1:15, so that was a pretty regular IF day. I had a half salad from La Farm and at the 1/2 slice of multigrain bread that came with it. Then came back and resisted red velvet cupcakes and some sort of delicious peanut/marshmallow bars and ate nothing until I got home. Then ate taco salad made using leftover chili and followed that up with an apple with peanut butter and about three homemade almond flour saltine crackers. I'm pretty full, and I think I'm probably going to call it a day. I finished eating by 6 p.m., which will give me a full 19-hour fast before I eat lunch tomorrow at 1. Not bad. Hopefully the scale will be nice to me in the morning!

I've been here before

164. That's what the scale said this morning. I've been here before. The first time was before Christmas, as a new low that I promptly ruined with overindulgence over the holiday. I worked my way back to 164 and then 163 by the middle of January, only to blow that again by the end of January. Then I went to San Francisco in early February and gained six pounds in about two days. I decided to try IF'ing when I got back so that I could have something new to try out and to keep me on track. It worked really well and I got all the way down to 159.8 by the end of February. Then I got cocky and overate for a week and went back up. But I got strict with myself before our trip in March and got back down to 159.6, a new low, before we left. I overate on our trip and came back in the 162/163 range. And that's pretty much where I've stayed, at least when I've weighed myself right before breaking my fast. Yesterday, right before I ate, I was at 162.8, so that's probably my most accurate weight.

So, fingers crossed that my low-carb/IF combo will help me get back on track. 

Sigh ... figuring things out

OK, so I can't seem to get back on a consistent schedule with my intermittent fasting. When I only ever ate dinner, breaking my fast around 4 or 5 and basically having a snack or something to break my fast, dinner, and then a sweet treat, it worked perfectly well. I was rarely very hungry, and I was losing consistent amounts of weight. But lately, I've been eating lunch, snacking in the late afternoon, then eating dinner. That's a LOT more food, and with my head playing the "I can eat whatever I want" song over and over, I eat a bunch of crap. I'm not gaining weight ... I'm still in the 161.5/162 zone, but that's up a few pounds since before we left on our trip. Plus, even though I'm moderately happy with my current weight, I don't want it to be my FINAL weight.

So, I'm trying to decide what to do. Isn't there some diet where I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want with no repercussions and continuing to lose weight? No? Darn.

I'm beginning to lean toward low-carb again. Maybe after my recent indulgences in high-carb foods, low-carb will help me lose these last 10 or so pounds. Right now, I know that I just need to pick something I can stick with. I mean, I know low-carb works. I know intermittent fasting works. But neither one works if I'm not holding to them.

I don't like the feeling of eating crap that I get when I'm IFing. I know that's not the diet's fault, it's mine, but I also know that once my brain decides that I can "eat whatever I want" as long as I'm only eating during 5 hours, it's very hard to convince it otherwise. Somehow I feel like I DESERVE Mini Eggs because I went without food all day.

So, yeah, I'm using this space to try to figure out what the heck it is I want to do. Low-carb is enticing, mainly because I feel good when I'm on it. But when I'm IF'ing, I am just not as hungry. I wish I had the willpower to combine both, but, like I said, when I get finished with a 19- or 20-hour fast, I feel ENTITLED to eat whatever I want, and it's very hard to make myself stick to IF'ing.

Anyway, I'm going to have to think this whole thing through. Let's try some pros and cons of each method:

Low-carb
Pros:
Feel like I'm eating healthy foods
Can eat lunch with friends
Weighing myself in the morning makes it easier to track my weight
It's how Josh eats, and it makes it easier for him if I'm also eating/planning low-carb meals

Cons:
Must restrict what we eat
Losses were inconsistent and often slow

IF
Pros:
Can (pretty much) eat anything
Get full on less food
Have more time in the day (at lunch)
Very consistent weight loss with the 5-10 p.m. window

Cons:
Can't eat lunch
Feel like I'm eating unhealthy foods
Difficult weight tracking because of break-fast times

I think what I should probably do is get back on track with low-carb while still cutting out breakfast. If I don't eat after 8, that'll still be about a 17-hour fast, and then I can eat a strictly low-carb lunch and dinner. Then if I want to splurge on a meal or something, then I can pick lunch or dinner to be my splurge meal, and try to do a long fast beforehand (or afterward if I don't plan ahead).

So, let's try this. I'll get back on the low-carb bandwagon tomorrow, tracking what I'm eating and only eating lunch and dinner. Maybe an after-dinner treat, depending on my calorie- and carb-intake for the day at that point. Like I said in the title ... sigh. It's so frustrating to be so close to my original goal and yet to struggle so much to get there.

I guess I'll track my weight tomorrow morning and use that as my starting point for my renewed efforts. Here we go!

Back!

Wow ... I haven't posted in a really long time! Well, before we left for Josh's birthday trip, I was at 159.6. I came back and my fasting has been a bit off, so I haven't been able to weigh right before I break my fast, but I'm around 162. So I gained some weight during the trip. It's also nearing that time of the month, so that probably has something to do with it. Anyway, for the whole trip, I stuck with a 19-hour fast and a 5-hour eating window, I just PACKED that eating window full of chocolate and desserts and beer and fried fish and hamburgers with delicious onion rings on top and ... yum.

All this week, I've been eating poorly, and I've been breaking my fast around 1 with lunch and then eating dinner when I get home. So while I've been sticking to my window, I haven't lost much weight because I'm eating a LOT of food.

Today, it's almost 4 p.m., and I haven't broken my fast yet. I've got a ton of delicious sweet treats sitting next to me, trying to tempt me, but I'm holding off. I think we might try to go out to dinner tonight, and if we do that, I want to be super hungry and enjoy my meal, rather than being full of sweets and uncomfortable after dinner. I'd really like to go to Ruby Tuesday. I have a coupon that I THINK is still good for 2 entrees for $20. A steak and salad bar would be SO delicious! We'll see.

Almost a Month

So, tomorrow will have been a month of intermittent fasting for me, and as of my break-fast today at 2 p.m., I'm down 8.2 pounds from this time last month ... I'm right at 160. That's (obviously) about 2 pounds per week, which is SO MUCH better than I had been doing on Atkins.

I gained back a couple of the pounds that I lost while I was sick, but I've pretty much lost those and I'm looking ahead to breaking into the 150s again (maybe tomorrow?) and then heading down into brand-new territory :)

One interesting thing to note is that I've been consistently losing DESPITE the fact that I pretty much eat whatever I want in whatever quantity I want. I just eat it within a five-hour window (and often only a one- or two-hour window) and fast the rest of the time. I do try to break my fast with meat or cheese or something else low-carb and try to get in some fruits and veggies as well as a multivitamin every day. I'm hoping I can stick with my fast during our trip ... knowing I have a big, whatever-I-want dinner on the horizon makes it pretty easy to skip breakfast and lunch! And hopefully we'll be too busy to worry about it!

Weight averaging, Jan. and Feb.

So, I ended up January with an average weight of 165.3, which was only down 0.1 pounds from my December average of 165.4. Including some slightly high artificial sickness-related weight loss at the end of February, I closed out February at an average weight of 164 even, which is an overall loss of 1.3 pounds since January.

And, you may have guessed it, but my crazy big losses while I was sick didn't stick around for long. The past couple of days I was headed back up, but I seem to have settled at 162, which isn't that bad, and it's still a new low.

I've been sort of off track so far this week. I don't know if being sick and barely eating made me extra hungry or what, but I've eaten lunch both days this week. It's not even that I've been hungry, really, it's just that I have had a bit of a weird schedule, so my 19 hour fast has been up at around lunchtime, so I've gone ahead and broken my fast. Which isn't that big of a deal, because I'm still technically sticking to the 19 hour fast/5 hour eating window, BUT I find that when I break my fast early, I eat a lot more. I would generally be satisfied with just one meal, but when I eat lunch, I worry that I'll get hungry again, so I eat dinner too, plus snacks, even when I'm so not hungry. So, today, I'm trying to get back on track and fast until dinnertime. That'll be about a 23- or 24-hour fast, depending on when dinner is ready.

One thing I've noticed since I've gotten used to fasting is that I am so, so, SO much less hungry in general. I really can't eat very much food at one sitting, and even when I really WANT to overeat (on something like Mini Eggs), my stomach won't let me. I eat much more realistic portions these days. It's almost like, by fasting, I've reset my fullness sensors and they're much more sensitive now to that feeling of being full and really not WANTING more to eat. I'm very satisfied with a normal dinner and a small snack, whereas I would normally eat three meals and some snacks throughout the day and still feel hungry at times. It's very nice.

For the most part, I've been eating whatever I want. I've eaten Mini Eggs and actually had one full-sized Creme Egg, chocolate chips with peanut butter, Cheez-Its, peanut butter crackers, an ice cream sandwich ... all sorts of stuff. I'm still making my normal low-carb dinners (mostly meat and veggies), and I try to eat a bit of fruit each day too. So, I'm not feeling deprived of any of the treats that I want, but I'm also still losing weight and breaking through plateaus. It's kind of nice!