!Bounce!

I got tired of tracking my food all the time, I relaxed about what I weighed and opened up my food choices, the Eating Season opened with Halloween, stress at work escalated rapidly while remaining high at home, and so exercise waned and late night pigouts increased.  The result was inevitable.

This shows the calendar year. The gridlines are 5 pounds apart.

I stopped tracking in mid-September, after logging food faithfully for maybe 80% of the whole year. For a while I coasted on my good habits, and continued to lose some weight, getting on one memorable day within one pound of my (somewhat arbitrary) goal weight. Yay!  I've got this! My life is changed. I'm a genius. I'm no longer a fat person and I don't need to think about it all the time.

But in the very recent past the trend has been bad. I continue to weigh every day (thanks to the wifi connected scale) and so have immediate feedback. I have access to the data via two taps on the internet in the palm of my hand at any time, so I don't ignore the evidence. Yesterday's weight popped up and crossed a five pound line, and all the alarm bells went to red alert.  So vague mental resolutions to "do better" were replaced with a firm commitment.

There is no secret to why I'm gaining weight, even without the actual data since I haven't logged food. I love food truck lunches, and even though I go for salads and other green vegetable-based dishes they have many hidden carbs, such as sugar in the salad dressing for banh mi salad and glorious garlic soaked croutons in the best caesar salads. But I could probably have handled that, at least for maintenance, but those evenings plopped in front of the TV with multiple trips to find chocolate all over the house - and even to stuff on left over main courses, anything to fill the hole that seems to yaw open each night.

Yesterday was Day One. My plan is to track, and to stop eating after 8:30 pm.  These are rigid rules. I constantly bargain with myself, and I need to stop that! Further, for the next couple of weeks, I want to go pure low carb - detox my system from the sugar and occasional starches that have crept in. For the next two weeks, calories don't matter, but carbs do - I'm going to target the lowest recommended level - 20 net carbs a day. ("Net carbs" are total carbohydrate grams minus fiber grams. It encourages filling up leafy greens, high fiber countering the carbs within.)

The joy of low carbing is you shed water stored throughout your body and so today was already two and a half pounds below yesterday's high peak weight. No single day means much on weight, but of course it's better to see the scale go down than up, even though intellectually I know it doesn't matter.

Of course the resolution required me to start with an expensive food shopping to set me up with favorite foods.  Caesar salads (will have to buy a roast chicken tonight), with excellent parmesan cheese and good greens. Easy grab guacamole, feta and olives, fancy flavored (but unsweetened) water, chicken salad for lunch today. A good habit I have to re-energize is bringing my lunch to work. It's so much cheaper, great when I'm pressed for time, and overcomes impulses at the glorious food truck city right outside my building. Instead of waiting on line at the trucks I can take a brief walk for roughly the same time.

This resolution is intended to last until Thanksgiving Day. I'm posting this so I have accountability. I'm thinking chunks of time, at least two weeks at a crack, may get me through this season. There is Thanksgiving, I'll be visiting my brother after that - he and his wife are real foodies, and I'll have more fun if I'm relaxed and have choices. Plus alcohol. But then I could have a three week stretch before Christmas.  There will be parties and food at the office throughout the time, but that will be no problem, if I have a plan to eat the good stuff just over the horizon.

The evening thing has been a persistant problem. Surely less tempting stuff in the house is good. But I think I need to have a mental but absolute cutoff - a virtual lock that appears on the kitchen at 8:30 each night. If the cravings are bad, I know from experience the best response is to leave the house with the dog and put some miles on, up and down the hills of my neighborhood.  It's cold and dark now, but I treated myself to a cool reflective running jacket specifically for this time. I like wearing it, which is part of the silly motivation, and whatever works is great.

So that's my thinking. I'm committed through Thanksgiving, and I'll reassess afterwards. What's your holiday plan?