After week 1 on a diet thing - well, kinda

Maybe it's not the best idea to start a diet the week of Easter?

So I only lost 1 butter this week.  Oh well, only 9 to go!

So I decided I'd try this crazy strict diet for the first three days of eating healthier - kinda like a cleanse - and then just be more sensible with food from there.  I adjusted it a little though.  Cos it's crazy strict.  I don't know how anyone could actually follow this without collapsing from low blood sugars.   Cos I almost did on the first day before I adjusted it.*

So I had fruit, yoghurt and nuts for breakfast, a bland chicken stew (chicken with veges) for lunch (made from chicken breast for low fat hence the bland) and the eggs and salad as suggested for dinner.  I ended up having hummus and grainy crackers as a snack - and fruit or carrots if still hungry.  The morning lemon cleanser was easy as I already do that - but I decided to halve the green tea night time quotient as my bladder was unlikely to let me get any sleep if I had a litre of tea between 6pm and bedtime.

That was totally doable (and non-collapsable).

Then after that first three days I just had normal meals - but cut gluten and red meat and continued with healthy snacks and that awesome breakfast (with the addition of a little muesli) and not snacking after dinner.  And it wasn't that hard.  I loved the breakfast.  The lunch was bland, but filling and healthy and whilst dinner sounds simple I honestly really enjoyed it.  And whilst it would get boring if I had to have it every day, I could totally rock it twice a week no problems.

And then BANG.  It was Easter Weekend.  And working bee at the bach.  And our anniversary.  And two children's Easter egg hunts.  And Abby's birthday - all in the space of one long weekend.

So I kinda fell off the wagon.

One thing I can say is that I didn't go too crazy.  I did eat chocolate and snack foods and eating after dinner.  But I also did lots of walking and lugging and laying mulch at the working bee.  So I figured it (almost) balanced out.  And at Abby's birthday party whilst I did snack and eat things with gluten again, I wasn't crazy.  Like, I didn't eat an entire bag of crackers or chips (or even half a bag) which I probably would have previously.

So I can't really complain about only losing 500 grams.  I'm pretty sure I usually gain weight over Easter, so honestly, I'm pretty happy.

The best part of this diet so far is the massive increase in fruits and vegetables.  That can't be a bad thing.  I've also cut my coffee consumption down from daily to weekends and just occasionally during the week.  And my energy levels are fine - I needed coffee less than I thought I did**!  And starting the day ticking off two out of five servings of fruit or veges just feels really good - both physically and psychologically.

The worst part of this diet is the cost.  Truly - it ain't cheap.  Just looking at breakfast my daily cost has gone from about $1.00 (coffee and toast) to about $2.30.  And whilst dinner is probably cheaper, lunch is also dearer.  It's mostly the nuts, the proteins and the yoghurt - natural nuts are damned expensive!  Fruit, not so much - but the cost in time of ensuring there is fresh fruit and salad veges available for me each day is definitely an adjustment.

But hopefully, it'll just become a habit.

Because I like my new breakfast.  And I'm really enjoying rediscovering salad.  I've always liked salad, but I've always been lazy at making salad.  Because opening a bag of mescalin or baby spinach is just not enough - I want something tasty.  In doing this diet thing, I've realised I can actually whip up a really tasty green salad in under 5 minutes - and it's totally worth it.  Because filling up on salad means I eat less high calorie low nutrition food.  And that's what I need to do at the moment.

And fingers crossed I do it a bit better this week.  With no Easter maybe I can drop another two butters...



* Not a problem for me cos I don't need to lose 10 pounds in one week anyway.  Actually, no-one does.  Well, maybe people on The Biggest Loser, but not regular people.  Cos that's quite extreme weight loss.  So not really very sustainable.  And probably not very healthy.

** Probably what I actually needed was just better nutrition...

On Weight Gain

So what I didn't say in the last post about the horrid driving test was that this was with being back on medication.  (Imagine if I hadn't!  How crazy would that test have been?)

After a lot of thinking and assessing and checking in with other people, I decided that whilst I was coping reasonably ok, I wasn't coping as well with every day things as I could and it was impacting on the people I loved.  So I went back onto a low dose of sertraline.

At the same time I went back on the contraceptive pill.

Not primarily for contraceptive purposes though.  Despite having my period return when Abby was just 9 months old, it wasn't until recently that it started getting crazy again.  It went from tolerable to so heavy I had fainting spells.  After three months (I had to make sure it wasn't just a bad month) of horrible, irregular periods I decided to go back on the pill - I've used it previously to help regulate them and it works a treat for me.

The only sucky side effect of both of these things is that I very promptly blew up like a balloon.

While I'm quite comfortable in my own skin and genuinely don't feel that I look awful, I am not comfortable with the prospect of having to buy new clothes.  I quite like the clothes I already have and I just want to be able to fit into them a bit better.  And I'm a cheap bastard, so it seems ridiculous to have to spend money on clothes just because I've put on a little weight.

This probably wasn't helped by our holiday to Rarotonga.  Despite swimming every day, and sweating buckets in the crazy heat I'm pretty sure I gained at least half of this weight over there.  Holiday mode + being the home of my favorite dessert (poke) - which no-one else in my family likes - meant much poke was consumed (among other things...).

I have actually only gained about 3kg over the last two months, but it's just enough to tip the balance between me feeling ok about my size and not.  Before the weight gain I was already not feeling that great about myself, but because of breastfeeding and not sleeping I felt like my weight was not really a priority, and something to look at when other areas of my life were more stable. 

But now I am almost the heaviest I've ever been (besides during and immediately post pregnancy) and it feels uncomfortable.  I am not used to the way my thighs move against each other, and how I can't wear the tops I used to without thinking about my back fat.  3kg is not much, but when you are a shortie like me, it's proportionately more than for a regular person.

So now I'm sitting about 5kg above what is considered the top of 'healthy BMI' range for my height.  Now whilst I think BMI is a pretty shitty measure of 'health' there is a weight bracket I feel comfortable in - and that is around the 57 - 60kg mark.  I have dropped my weight right down under 50kg before.  And whilst many short celebrities happily rock those teeny numbers (Vanessa Hudgens who is my height is 50kg, Salma Hayek is 54kg), from experience I know that being little just ain't my bag.  My immunity goes AWOL which to me indicates it's not a healthy weight for me*.

But neither is 65kg.  So it's time to do something about it.

So this week I'm going on a cleanse for three days.  Then returning to much cleaner eating.

Pregnancy hormones had one positive for me: they made it easier for my body to digest stuff.  And whilst Abby is still having night feeds, most of those magic hormone things have gone, and it's time to acknowledge that my body doesn't want to process a lot of those things any more.  So it's goodbye to red meat** and back to a low gluten and low lactose diet for me.

I am not going to calorie count (like I have previously) and I'm not going to stop enjoying our weekly takeaway night (not cooking!), or my once a week food court work lunch.  And I'm not going to stop my Thursday late night tradition of lollies at work (to share - because late nights are hard).  But I am going to be more selective about what and how much I eat.

So this morning I started with this:

acidophilus yoghurt, kiwifruit and almonds.  It was delicious!

But now I'm hungry... And it's only been 3 hours... And I also had a banana... And it's still 2 hours until lunch time!  So wish me luck.  It's an especially hard day because Abby was up from 10.30pm until just after 1am then had to sleep in bed with me so I'm totally knackered.  Mumming + diet = extra hard cos no coffee... So wish me even more luck!

*And when my boobs bottom out below a C cup I feel like something is seriously wrong with me (cos I have almost always been at least a D cup.  So I'm used to my cups runningeth over)

** Not like I was eating much, but the stuff I was eating was definitely not good for me and not worth eating big, labour intensive to farm animals over.