Me and Michael Phelps

My weight loss has been a real case of the running in place recently. Down 1.4, up .6, down .2, up 2.2, etc. Netting out to zero, or close to zero.

And my god, I've been hungry.

Not Oh, that doughnut looks tasty sort of hungry, either.

But My bleeding Christ, I would kill someone to have a half cup of tuna fish!

You know when you find yourself feeling guilty about the six or seven grapes you ate (packing up your husband's lunch for the next day and snitching them as you washed them off...) that there's something really, really wrong.

I wasn't hungry for chocolate, or cake, or even cheese. I was just hungry.

Constantly.

And I got scared of my points again. I wasn't losing weight when I was eating my activity points (altho I wasn't eating most of my flex points... maybe 5-10 in the course of a week). So I stopped eating my activity points. And I still wasn't losing weight. And then I started skipping food from my regular points...

For the last couple weeks, without really confessing what I was doing - or even really thinking about what I was doing - I've been starving myself.

I get 19 points a day. Calculating that out, if I avoid the full fat stuff and eat mostly high fiber... that's 1,330 calories per day. My basal metabolic rate (rough guestimate based on height, weight and gender) I'm supposed to use up 1,400 calories laying in bed and pretending I don't exist.

You know that's not what I do.

I hit the elliptical a few times a week. I walk. I swim. (Hell, I even swim with my 35-pound child piggybacked on my back, and let me tell ya, that's not as much fun as it sounds... not for me, at any rate... good workout, though...) I do step while I watch old episodes of Buffy. I clean.

So, the question in my mind was this; how can I not be losing weight?

With the sort of calories I'm burning versus the amount of not-eating I was doing... calories in < calories out = weight loss, right?

I continued to cut calories. I was continually hungry, and I was getting to the point where I wanted to cry every time I opened the fridge. Every time I walked past a mirror. Every time I got dressed.

So, I'm talking to a friend of mine - bitching, really... and he said this;

"Girlfriend, you're working out like an athlete. It's time to start eating like one."

(Ok, maybe not that much.)

"Seriously, I want you to do this - do it for me, for just a month, and see where you are..."

- Eat the twigs in a bowl for breakfast NO MORE than twice a week. The rest of the week, eat an egg, or a muffin with some soy peanutbutter (we have to eat the soy stuff because of my daughter's peanut allergies, but it's really quite good, and loaded with protien.)

- eat at least one chocolate bar per week. Not the kind with goo in it, but a plain hershey's bar, or a lindt bar.

- eat your activity points. All of them. The day after you earn them. For snacks from activity points, chose high protien, low-carb foods. Cheese. Eggs. Grilled chicken strips. Yogurt.

- Avoid those 100 calorie stupidsnacks as much as possible. That means no more than 2 packs per week, and really, you should cut them out entirely. If you want a cookie, buy a damn COOKIE.

- eat all your flex points. ALL of them. Not 10. Not 20. 35. Points.

- drink 8oz of low-fat chocolate milk after your elliptical training.

- don't eat after 8:30pm (or, more exactly, don't eat in the three hours before bedtime. If you go to bed at midnight, you can bump that up to 9pm, etc.)

Me, looking at this list, actively horrified: I'll gain weight!

Him: You won't.

Me: Yes, I will.

Him: Ok, let me put it to you this way; I will pay for your weight watcher's membership for as long as it takes you to lose any weight you gain in that month.

Me: Oh, all right. What's the worst that can happen?

So... I tried it. I wore my Mio Stride almost all day so that I had a more accurate count of how many calories I was using up in a day. I ate. I wasn't hungry most of the time (after about Thursday, I was surprised by how hungry I was first thing in the morning, but after breakfast was eaten, I was fine...) and I had a pretty good week. I wasn't tired. I wasn't headachy. (I've spent the last two months having a low-grade headache all the time. So, you know, if I've been a bit of a bitch recently, that's probably part of why...)

My Wii Fit told me I was down about two pounds for the week, but you know, I didn't believe it. I've been having serious discrepency problems with the Wii versus the Weight Watcher's scale.

And actually, I have to admit, I was looking forward to yelling at my friend. See! See! You are so full of crap! That food-plan works FOR A GUY! You idiot!

But... I probably won't get to.

I lost five pounds this week.

Five.

Holy shit.

Me and Michael Phelps.

Well, anyway, I'm committed to trying this for 30 days.

Eat more to weigh less.

Doc Hudson: I'll put it simple: if you're going hard enough left, you'll find yourself turning right.

Lightning McQueen: Oh, right. That makes perfect sense. Turn right to go left. Yes, thank you! Or should I say No, thank you, because in Opposite World, maybe that really means thank you.

-- Cars