Okay, so I dropped another .8 pound since yesterday and 3 pounds in the past 5 days.
Yesterday was a bad plan day because BP kept delaying me. I still ate 3 meals and 3 snacks, but my timing was off all day. I ate more carbs than usual — more vegetables, more blueberries, more kefir — and a little less protein.
In general, my “forever diet” where I eat carefully most all of the time, but indulge when I want, works for me. My weight remains stable, I have no cravings, and I am always in control of what and how I am eating. If I want bread pudding, I eat bread pudding and I do not beat myself up about it. It worked all summer when my weight was stable. I traveled, I ate out 4-5 times/week, I drank (lower carb) margaritas, and my weight stayed at around 128, which was a weight everyone else was happy with. When I stopped traveling and spending so much time with BP, I dropped 6 pounds in 2 weeks, which was obviously mostly water from sodium-laden restaurant food.
The control part is that I do not bread pudding every day. I wouldn’t want to. I don’t comfort myself with food anymore. It’s just fuel. I mean, I cook wonderful meals and I use excellent ingredients — lots of organics or local product, everything hormone-free. I enjoy what I cook — veggie frittatas, quiche, burgers, braised lamb or turkey, vegetable soups with heavy cream. I eat excellent cheese, I eat nuts all day long. Because of travel, etc., I have not been making many salads, but I still toss spinach or broccoli with feta or ricotta together as a side dish. When I travel, I eat as I must, but I pay attention to the basic tenets of my plan: lots of protein, non-starchy vegetables, etc., and staying away from bread unless I really, really want it. If I do, I have it, like the sweet potato biscuit I had on nyd and the cake I had on nye.
My dilemma now is that each pound I lose makes me want to lose more weight. That’s the disordered part of my thinking. Right now, I am on a diet for absolutely no reason. I want to drop to 115. I want to weigh 115, which is a thought that never occurred to me until I was consistently under 119.
Wanting to weigh 115 pushes me into my weight loss danger zone, where I suspect that 115 will become 113. That is my intervention weight. I have weighed 113 in my 30s. It’s not a good weight for me. It’s the weight when normal men started telling me I looked too skinny, that they could count my ribs through my sweater. (I do not look that kind of thin, though.) It’s the weight when I felt brittle, where my feet hurt in heels. I can already feel some discomfort in unpadded or poorly cushioned chairs, but my feet are fine.
I doubt I will lose weight today. I may see my friends to watch the game, so I may have a glass or two of wine. But I am already thinking about it, thinking about what I may eat, and wondering if I should skip it until I can lose the next 1.6 pounds. That is the disordered me.
At this point, I am still in control of it. I can eat and indulge and still feel okay with myself, but I really want to lose the weight, just to do it. I don’t think I will look significantly different than I do right now. I still think my thighs are fat, I still hate the flab above my hip bones, but I love my body. It’s imperfect, but it’s mine. I think I see me as I am, but it’s impossible to tell.
The control part is important here. I do wonder if the weight loss is my way of exerting control right now. I believe it is mostly for vanity, mostly because I can do it, mostly because I like my body better at this general size and I am afraid I will float up to a weight I don’t like. I think I look great, despite what BP and A think, and I want to keep looking like this. But in the back of my mind, I wonder if I am using it as a way of exerting order over my chaotic life.
I am keeping track of all of this because I know I am on the cusp here. I think another 2 pounds is okay. I know another 4 pounds is not.
