Part of the 75 Hard challenge is to set up a diet plan for yourself and follow it religiously. The term diet does not mean a diet in the negative weight loss connotation. The rule to set up a diet plan is just saying to set up an eating plan for the time frame. It does not have to be a plan that will encourage your body to lose weight. It could be something as simple as limiting how much soda a person drinks, or cutting alcohol or going sugar free. Anything! I have one follower on my youtube channel that decided to do the 75 hard along with me and for her diet plan she simply made the rule that she has to track her food each and every day. It doesn't matter WHAT she eats, she just has to track it. Sure she is trying to keep it under a certain caloric goal, but her plan is to TRACK. For me though, I decided to set up a diet plan that would 'encourage' my body to lose weight.
I decided that my goal would be to stay under 1500 calories! I could do that, no problem right? Well let me tell you, at the beginning it was tight! But I quickly settled down and got used to eating the fewer calories. And the first week or so I lost big....I lost 5.5 pounds! And then I hit a week where I actually gained! I gained 1.5 pounds! What in the world? I was working out, religiously. I was drinking my water, religiously. I was keeping my calories under 1500, religiously! There should NOT have been a gain! Yet, I was staring at the scales and seeing a gain!
I knew that something was dreadfully wrong so I looked deep and here is what I found.
1. I remembered that I typically do not lose at the 1500 calorie mark. I tend to lose at 1400 and below but my calorie count that week was always JUST below the 1500 mark! Yes, that seems low. HOWEVER, I do not weigh my food all the time. I do it here and there to 'recalibrate' my portion sizes. But I don't do it all the time. So I look at it as the lower caloric goal is my trade off for not having to be anal and weigh everything! Plus, I share my food with pets. Just this morning I had a banana and some peanut butter. The dog ate a bite or two of banana and some of the peanut butter and the bird got a slice of banana and some peanut butter! So my figures would be all skewed should I be weighing my food. So I just figured out through trial and error where my calories need to be for my non weighed and animal shared meals. (And man, now I feel guilty because I didn't give the crabs anything!)
2. Carbs. I love them! OH my word to I love my carbs! However, I have long known that my body does not love carbs....or rather maybe my body loves carbs a little too much and those carbs stick with me! I have found that I can handle one serving of a complex carb each day. That means ONE serving of a bread or potato. Not two...not three. In that week where I gained 1.5 pounds I was eating an undue amount of carbs. Ok, maybe undue amount was a bit overdramatic, but I was eating more than the one serving that my body 'allows.'
So I was totally able to identify what the problem was that had led me to gaining weight that week and I vowed to make the changes for the upcoming week. However.......
Yeah, the changes didn't happen. I was drawn to the kitchen where I made homemade bread. Then I made homemade English muffins. And if that wasn't enough I then made homemade pretzels! Of course I ate some of my baked goods! Of course I did! I was out of control! Until I realized what was happening. I was drowning in grief. I was coming up on the first anniversary of my mom's death and subconsciously I had sought out comfort. (You can read how I managed the week after her death and see a picture of my mama here.) Comfort for me is baking. Comfort for me is carbs. In my grief as the anniversary approached, I was drowning myself in both.
I am proud to say that as soon as I realized what I was doing that I was able to turn it around. The baking and carb-fests ended and I got back to the basics. I weigh myself daily and I had seen the scales slide upward during those few days of grief laden indulgence. I HOPED to turn it around enough to show a maintain on the scales for my official weigh in day (which is currently set at Wednesday).
I was SO surprised to step on the scale on Wednesday morning. I didn't maintain. But I didn't gain! I actually LOST weight! I lost 3.1 pounds! I lost enough weight that I recouped my 1.5 pound gain from my official weigh in the week before AND added another 1.6 pounds to that loss! GO me.
So a few things that I learned from this:
1. The calorie thing that I talked about earlier in this post really does hold true.
2. Carbs are the devil....for my body. But thank heavens I CAN indulge once a day!
3. Diet soda.........I'm not sure if this is a coincidence or not....BUT, when I turned things I accidentally stopped drinking my diet soda in the evenings. My plan has been to drink water during the day...and if I am done with my required amount of water at the end of the day then I can indulge in a glass of diet soda. When I turned the ship around in terms of my eating, I somehow just stopped getting my glass of soda. IT was accidental really. I was just not finishing my required (for the 75 Hard challenge) water early enough to allow myself that glass of diet soda. Could the diet soda be part of that amazing weight loss (because seriously.... I officially lost 3.1 pounds, but in reality I had gained an extra pound before I turned it around....a pound that never was counted in an official weigh in. WE are talking substantial weight loss in just a few days. Coincidental? I am not sure....but stay tuned, I will be keeping an eye of it!
