Thanksgiving day

springlering62 wrote: »

I’m going to come at this from the other direction, as always, with love and concern, having lost nearly 100 myself.

Nadine, all your previous posts, dating back to October, refer to eating well for a day or two and then asking when you can have a cheat day.

You’ve got to come up with some consistency. It seems you punish yourself with too few calories and then crave a “cheat day”. You keep undoing any hard work you’ve done.

I bet dollars to donuts you’ll be here Friday, worried that you’re back up to 200 again and disregarding advice that it will be a temporary water and carb gain.

I’m going to say, enjoy your thanksgiving, then come up with an actual plan. Set a reasonable calorie goal so you’re not howling for a cheat day after three days of eating.

Make your diary public and listen to the very excellent and caring advice others here have given you.

Create new habits, make sure you have enough calories to include foods you enjoy so every day can “feel” like a cheat day. Find other foods that can become cheat foods on a daily basis.

I would 1,0000x rather have a bowl of cottage cheese and frozen blueberries than a bowl of ice cream these days. I’ve retrained myself to ENJOY it.

You seem like you are in a tight rope and people at either end are tugging it and you’re wobbling like a crazy Wallenda. Find balance, honey.

We’re all pulling for you here, but you need to be willing to carry some of the load yourself.

This is all such great info! If you are craving a cheat after 3 days, it's quite possible you've set yourself a too aggressive weight loss goal, and may be trying to stick to a low calorie limit.

Sometimes, when you are starting out, it's almost more helpful to just try eating at maintenance for a few weeks. It's quite likely you've been eating above maintenance, so even that would be a deficit from your routine. Just getting into the habit of logging accurately (with a scale) takes some effort and can be frustrating, so it's often wise to ease into the calorie restriction component, or it will feel overwhelming.

Are you calculating exercise calories? Do you account for day to day activity? Do you eat those calories back? All those things contribute to your body's need for fuel.

@springlering62's advice to enjoy Thanksgiving and then come back with a plan is solid. I would suggest that re-evaluating your weight loss rate and timelines would be a great idea, too. Even though you may not "LOSE 30 pounds in ONE MONTH", it's been pretty well proven that slow steady loss is also one that is more easily maintained than rapid loss.

The goal is to find an eating plan that is sustainable and enjoyable. It's a long term fix, not a quick one.

The biggest win to celebrate... you are here. you care. you are putting in the effort, and you have a bunch of people who want to see you succeed!

So, addressing the larger issues here, in the context of specifically this:

If you feel like you NEED a 'cheat' day/to go over, and that's the only thing that's getting you through a few days/week/month of being 'good', there's some stuff that's gone wrong. Could be going too hard at the deficit/being too restrictive.

Could also be just being preoccupied by food and seeing the 'be good' as some kind of thing where you are trying to 'earn' the downtime, or punishment for being fat, or otherwise just an unpleasant thing that you don't *really* want to be doing.

Stop trying to lose right now. Set your goal to maintain and log your food. Look back over your days and look for places you can *painlessly* cut down your food.

Today, so far, I've had a protein shake, 2 cups of coffee (with stevia, milk, and sugar free nesquick) a yogurt, 4 pieces of bacon, a grilled cheese sandwich (with -2- slices of cheese) with tomato soup. Dinner will be chicken breast, baked sweat potato, and probably green beans. My before bed snack will be a piece of chocolate cake. That's perfectly, totally, normal eating. Nothing about it screams 'WATCHING MY WEIGHT'. There's nothing there that feels like deprivation.

So when I step away from logging tomorrow, and eat my thanksgiving meal, yeah. There'll be more calories. But it won't be some big aberration or... relief, either. It won't be a 'break'. Going back to normal eating won't feel like 'back to the salt mines' or whatever. It'll just be a LITTLE different and I won't do the math. It's... not an EVENT in the 'not logging/eating more calories' way, just the 'time with family and friends I love and not going to work' one.

THAT IS IMPORTANT.