Yesterday, I got up, had a cup of coffee with half and half, spent all day doing necessary computer stuff and house cleaning, and then went to my cousin's for a nice (free) dinner of swiss steak, salad, baked potatoes, and wonderful berry pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert. I didn't have time to walk yesterday, and knowing that dinner was not going to be perfectly paleo, I opted for a day of fasting, only having coffee with half and half in the morning, and drinking water all day instead of eating. Before bed, I had a glass of wine.
Sometimes I tend to worry about these sorts of meals de-railing my weight loss progress...I don't worry so much about it being "bad" for me, since I am allowed three meals per week that are "open" after all...But if I make a habit out of eating badly on any sort of regular schedule, I worry that it will become just that--a habit, and I will lose some of my control and slowly spiral away from my goal which is to eat a healthy paleo/primal diet and hopefully to lose some weight along the way. The cool thing is that I have had a really, really good experience starting September 1st.
I am going to lay it all out here. If you aren't interested in my boring weight loss statistics, just go now. Run. While you can. OK, here goes...
I weighed 203.8 lbs. on Wednesday, Sept. 1st (gasp).
That is almost an all time high for me. I just had a birthday a few days ago, and I was feeling pretty low about the fact that my weight seems to just do its own thing--regardless of how much I eat, or how far I walk, or whether I lift weights...So this week, I've been keeping track of my calories, and walking most days for 4 miles. Yesterday I took the day off from walking and I didn't walk Wednesday either. Both of those days I fasted all day and had dinner at my cousin's which was very yummy, free and not quite paleo...but it was largely unprocessed really good food. (My cousin is an excellent cook and wonderful hostess).
So today, with some trepidation I stepped on the scale, expecting some weight gain due to the carby nature of my dinner, and the fact that I hadn't exercised at all yesterday. Instead I was greeted with the surprising weight of 198.8. I have been averaging about 104 grams of carbohydrates per day this month so far--all fruit or starchy veggies--except for dessert at my cousin's. I have been fasting quite a lot, or eating very light meals early in the day, and one big meal late in the day. I have averaged 1848 calories per day (over the past 5 days), and averaged 2.4 miles per day. The interesting thing here for me is that I was following a much stricter low carb Paleo diet than this for months with no success--and suddenly the weight is just dropping off. How weird is that?
I'm not running, I find weight loss stories interesting! It looks like you've hit on something that works, so go with it! You can't go wrong with good, whole unprocessed food even if as you say it's "not quite paleo". And 100 grams of carbs a day is low compared to the average diet, most people eat way more than that and usually in the form of processed junk. IF is effective too, and good for your body. So FWIW, I say: keep on doing what you're doing!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the support Judith! I suppose I should just be honest and call it primal :) I find, interestingly that on days when I fast all day--I tend to go pretty low carb, so on other days it evens out. Even including my "open" meals it is very little processed junk, so I'm doing well! I think I could keep doing this forever...
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