Hahaha! You lot crack me up! And not just cheesy - I put too much garlic in the soup I had tonight so it's garlicky cheesy breathe. Mmm, sometimes I really do wonder why I'm single....
But thank you for your comments Colette and Sid, it's very sweet of you.
So I've not posted in my diary for about a week cos it's been super hectic! Last Sunday my diary for the week ahead was looking blissfully empty and I was looking forward to evenings of domestic bliss and wholesomeness. Then Dad came down unexpectedly on Monday and Tuesday, a friend asked if she could stay on Wednesday, I had to go up to my new flat on Thursday evening for a last minute meeting about some communal works and then on Friday my lovely cousin arrived from Australia and I've been in full hosting mode ever since.
After my disaster last Monday when I ate way too much for no reason, things got a little better...I think. I say 'I think' because the battery from my scale ran out last Saturday so I haven't been able to weigh myself for over a week. I normally would have replaced the battery immediately but I remember all you telling me not to weigh every day so I thought I'd give it a go. It's been torture! I don't think there's been more than one or max two days I've failed to weigh myself when at home in, ooh, almost 30 years, so it has felt very strange indeed. Not really in a good way - I have no idea what's going on and I feel fatter than ever but can't check if that's true or not. How do you all cope without daily weigh ins???!
So after I cooked for Dad we went out for a meal on Tuesday and that was fine - I ate slowly, ordered two starters instead of a starter and a main and actually asked for a doggy bag. Plus we ate reasonably early so I didn't eat after 8.30 which is rare for me. Then the Wednesday was ok - made soup for my friend with corn on the cob to start and then bread and cheese....and a bottle of wine between us, ahem. Then Thursday was amazing because I ate lunch late then had to race half way round London to this meeting and by the time I got home it was almost 10.30pm so I decided it was too late to eat and went to bed feeling light and fabulous, rather than stuffed and uncomfortable as usual.
Friday was also ok because although we ate out, again, I ate slowly and we shared a few dishes so I didn't feel I'd over eaten, although we certainly over-drank!
Saturday was a lot of walking as we went down to see my cousin and her kids (her husband is making a miraculous recovery and might be allowed to travel back to the UK this week. Fingers crossed!) We had a pub lunch and I was far too full but then we had a reasonably light dinner (out again) so actually, I only had two meals that day and no snacking.
Yesterday I did an hour long run (in the rain, purely because I wanted to reach my target from the exercise challenge thread which is a good thing, even though at the time it felt like a bad thing!) and some walking but ate too much and too late for dinner. Grrr.
So the big thing I've been trying, as well as the stopping eating when full, which still proves very tricky, is to go 16 hours a day without eating. This maybe sounds more dramatic than it is. The idea came from the fast diet (or 5:2 diet). The theory is that going longer periods without food gives your body a chance to reset itself and the time you're not eating allows your body to focus on repairing itself etc. I found the 5:2 pretty hard to be honest - the fast days were tough, more psychologically than anything - and I was over-compensating on the non-fast days. This variation means you're not limiting your calories on any day of the week, but every day you're restricting the window in which you're allowed to eat to just 8 hours. So if I finish dinner at 8pm, I just have to wait until 12pm the next day to eat. So it's not crazy. The problem is that I tend to eat late at night, which means I sometimes have to wait until 2 or 3pm the next day to eat BUT, the amazing thing is that I now realise this so I've been stopping earlier so as to avoid having to wait too long to eat the next day.
What it also does is shrink your stomach, so I've been finding I can't eat that much before feeling uncomfortable. Annoyingly I do still plough on and eat until I'm uncomfortably full, but at least that point comes sooner than it did. Ok, this is still far from ideal, I do realise that!!
Without weighing myself I can't really tell if it's working to be honest, but I do feel like I've eaten less than I usually would have and I like that it's sort of coercing me into stopping eating earlier in the evening. However I really, really need to work on my 'I'm full, I should stop eating now' button. I start off so well - eating slowly, chewing my food properly....then I decide I'm full but I still want to eat. Grrrr.
Right, sorry for the long post but it's been about a week and I really am trying to make sense of what's going on in my head and to overcome it. If this doesn't work I think I'm going to go back on super strict Dukan for a few weeks to jump start things, but like Jo (Maintainer), I'm trying to find a way to eat what I want, more or less, without having to resort to something as restrictive as full blown Dukan.
My big dilemma now is whether or not to get a new battery for the scale! I do feel very lost without the daily weigh in, but I can kind of see that it's good to give myself a chance to be free from it. However I now don't know where I'm at and don't want to carry on with this 16:8 hour balance if it's not working at all. What do you all think?
Joodle x