I've just completed my planned week off, excellent that it coincided with Christmas, as it's all about food in my family. In addition to adding a few pounds, which of course is to be expecting with the refilling of glycogen stores, I was also aware of a number of other effects of going back to my old eating habits. I toyed with what to do for the this week for some time, stay as low carb as poss, eat low gi this week and a hundred other combinations. In the end I figured it would be an interesting experiment and a timely reminder to go back to how I used to eat and see what happened.
First things first, I gained a total of 6lb. One of those was a late sneak in from the very end of the previous week, when I forgot to consider the amount of non-meat in cocktail sausages (!) then 5lb for this week. Overall, I'm very impressed with that, considering my week 1 loss was 11lb, my expectation was that I would pop back on a minimum of half a stone. The next biggest thing was that I could not physically manage the volume of food I had previously won medals for. I tried, believe me I really did try, but I had to conceed defeat on several occasions where I literally felt that I was full to the brim and there was no more room at the inn.
Important to note for me, is how eating like that again made me feel. Bloated, sick, uncomfortable, sluggish, tired and restless at the same time. I just didn't feel like I'd felt for the previous 12 weeks, my energy seemed to be entirely gone as did my drive to want to get up and do anything. Some unusual things to note too - I get terrible short term arthitis type pains in my hands on waking, my finger joints are stiff and painful and I have to wait for my hands to "wake up" before I can use them properly. My fingers snap from straight to bent like trigger finger. It wasn't until this came back this week that I really considered how long it had been since I woke with that pain - clearly there is a link to eating carb. My left hip has been increasingly painful over the last couple of years too - again this pain has returned this week when it had been fading (with the lessoning weight I thought, I'd not considered the carb link before). My skin is dull, my hair is lank. Quite frankly, I'm astonished at the difference in me!!
So, sticking with the plan, today I'm back onto 4 packs a day. I don't plan to suplement this at this stage, but will consider additional low carb additions for the first few days if needed to get back into ketosis. This morning I felt incredibly hungry, proper hungry too, cause now I know what that feels like! I intend to track my carb intake on the SS support site, and note my calories. I'm going to start reading Beck from the start again, and will complete every exercise in writing, even the ones I've already put into action, so I have a record of everything achieved.
This weeks target - drop that 6lb gain and get back to 3 stone off.
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