Of refeeds and diet breaks

Ouch

I'd checked in with a totally non-sciency report on my own diet break a week or so ago, which is not in keeping with the spirit of this thread so sorry about that. Now, let the non-science continue!

No scale so no way to weigh myself daily with precision and report findings like many have done on here. The best I could do was to say my measurements were the same both before and after, which I realise is not saying a lot because imagine how much I would have had to eat in those two weeks to blow myself up significantly. Just saying. Muddying the waters, I ate well over the MFP-recommended maintenance rate during that period but that doesn't mean I necessarily ate over my 'real' maintenance because I'd previously also lost weight faster than MFP predicted. I figured if I overshot it would be worth knowing I'd at least made it high enough. Sleep problems had been one of the motivations for taking a break, so restoration of hormonal balance seemed like a big deal.

But again, I don't actually know for sure if I ate at or over, which I mention because someone upthread asked about it. If I had to guess I'd say I went a bit over because I was travelling and not in particularly good control of my food intake (fast food, pub food most nights). Plus there were definitely at least a couple of days where I went over by like 1000 calories and MFP can't be that far off.

Returned to deficit a week ago exactly but didn't actually do all that well on calories this past week. Trying to regain control after the travelling-related food free-for-all. Nevertheless, this morning I was down half an inch each on my waist, hips, and thighs. Once again muddying the scientific waters, unfortunately, I should also say that TOM arrived yesterday, which usually comes with a bit of a whoosh, but TOM wouldn't have whooshed my measurements PAST where they were before the diet break started, right?

Nony_Mouse wrote: »

Nope, TOM whoosh wouldn't account for smaller measurements than before diet break

Right then, so in the name of trying to encourage anybody on this board who is still scared of the idea of temporarily upping calories, let's gloss my case as: 2 week break, ate over maintenance, and even despite having a weak deficit in the first week back post-break still whooshed like a mother.

Officially weighed in this morning. 187.8 lbs which was less than expected. I possibly underestimated my maintenance calories or over estimated my intake. It is still up a bit from my low weight, but I expected a bit more.

A bit of a dejected morning. Was the same this Monday as I was last Monday -- which makes sense, considering that I supposedly ate at maintenance last week. But last Monday was up two pounds from the day before, which ... is not helpful.

I know there's some cyclical water weight at play, but I am not feeling encouraged. I think I'd been at maintenance for almost two weeks, and I would have thought *something* would have budged by now.

Leeg5656 wrote: »

Can someone tell me what a whoosh is?

I'm not the most knowledgeable one here on such things, so will not give the best explanation but as it's been explained to me (take with a grain of 'woo' salt) effectively it's when you suddenly lose a whole bunch of weight at once, like whoosh! It happens because our fat cells may first fill with water before flushing themselves out, so instead of losing steadily you seem to hang on to your extra weight for a while even after you've 'burned' the fat, then lose a lot at once on a delayed reaction.

anubis609 wrote: »

I'm finally back from my 4 day hibernation. I ate, Netflix and chilled, did some maintenance activity, and ate some more. Food was hardly tracked accurately and weight fluctuation settled around 176-178. Expected/10; would eat again. Lol.

The cycle speak doesn't deter the men folk as much as it's not too deep in our realm, or mine anyway

As far as addressing the benefit of having a full diet break go beyond 2 weeks, yes, there's a real benefit to having an "indefinite" break.. and that's lifetime maintenance. The ultimate goal for most. Trying to pinpoint a daily maintenance number is a bit of a hat trick since it's a moving target and each day is more or less variable, depending on your daily activity, stress level, cycle, etc. So take the average of what you're eating, compare it to an objective metric (scale weight/measurements/clothes/visual assessment/etc) and depending on the outcome, you adjust intake accordingly to add to that running average.

If anyone took the Thanksgiving holiday as a refeed/maintenance/diet break period, then hopefully it was a mental relief. If you're like me, you splurge the day of and repeat days of eating leftovers just tends to taper down in volume and indulgence as monotony sets in. So in the end, it's not too much of a spike.

Just as an interesting/funny side story, a fb buddy decided to surpass his previous victory of eating 10lbs of turkey, and almost single-handedly demolished a 21lb bird. I don't advise anyone attempt it but it was a source of pride among carnivores lol. And while Martin Berkhan doesn't seem to document the cheesecake life on holidays anymore, the primary takeaway is that a small blip in long term success isn't going to destroy progress as long as the rest of the year is pretty damn stable.

This is how I've come to feel about holidays and vacations, and I think it's probably the most well-adjusted attitude to have towards them unless you are the type of person who gets sent into a spiral of bad behaviors that are really hard to claw your way out of.

Regardless, sounds like you had a great weekend!

I had to limit my indulgence to one day because the over consumption of that macro mix and my IBS did not play well together. Since the leftovers still consisted of that macro mix, discretion was the better part of valor and I noped out of them, mainly because I wanted some time with my family this past weekend that wasn't spent in the smallest room of the house

Scale is still up from my lowest by 3 pounds, but down 3 pounds from what it was yesterday. Yes, it was up by 6 pounds from my lowest, even though I've been eating at deficit since Friday. This is fairly normal for how my body reacts, so I'm not terribly surprised.

Meanwhile, my thyroid has been ruled out as the cause of what's going on with me. It is in fact, slightly on the over active side. My dosage was once again lowered just slightly. This has been an ongoing thing ever since my thyroid went crazy a couple years back and stopped responding to med doses. At that point, we went through a spell of constantly titrating the doses ever upward. The process took more than a year before I finally normalized and we added almost a 100mcg more to my dosage at that time. I stabilized at that point for a while, and then I started exercising and losing weight, and my thyroid's been running hot ever since.

Anyway, the fatigue and being slow to recover continues, so I can only assume it's a psoriatic arthritis flare. Nothing to do for one of those but continued milder forms of exercise, good nutrition and sleep hygiene, and waiting it out.