Hey Minis!
This is a bit of an analytical post in terms of diet; since returning from India and being frankly god smacked by not gaining about 6x what I did, I've decided I need to have a closer look at my diet and understand things a bit... Before I went away I'd really struggled to lose weight in the previous 3 months apart from when I went carb free, also in the early months of the year before I went on my first trip I was struggling with gains and STS's when I was eating what I thought was pretty on plan... Things aren't quite adding up now when I look at the carb based diet I was eating in India on top of all the junk- and gaining barely more than I have done in a week where I've over cereal'd
Things are starting to add up. I just want to say now that I'm an extraverted thinker (and introverted feeler) - meaning to understand my thought process/logical ideas I really need to output it conversationally (or in this case, on paper!) so actually I'm writing all this down as a way of understanding, rather than trying to force my ideas down your throats or anything
it's all pretty OBVIOUS stuff that I'd just been ignoring for ages, nothing revolutionary... I'm just excited to have shed light on my own problems, lol! You guys are going to face palm when you realise that the punchline of this post is just: "I've been massively over Hex'ing for months"
um... duh?
OK, so here we go...
In India I was generally eating 2 big meals a day (breakfast and lunch) and sometimes a dinner, sometimes not as I often didn't feel the need. I was eating a lot of white rice, creamy curries, brown bread (after the pain of white bread getting too much for my gut) and, eh
chocolate! I was eating a 10 square bar of dairy milk caramel or galaxy, etc, at least 1-2 times a day. I realise on speculation that despite a pretty unhealthy diet out there, I was eating at regular meal times one hearty meal, where the month before I was kinda eating snacky meals all day and often a very late dinner around 10pm-midnight which isn't a good idea for weight loss.
Breakfasts in India usually involved eggs (hard boiled), rice, wholewheat bread, some sort of lentil dahl and veg curry, occasionally a banana and some curd (thick kinda yoghurt). This is what Indian's eat as a staple breakfast; sometimes that buffet had cornflakes and I'd OD on them a bit, often there would be white toast and I'd have a slice or two with jam (on top of all that!). Maybe 1/3rd of the time we didn't have breakfast included so instead of that buffet^ (I'd always overeat at buffets, it's something I can never control!) I'd order cornflakes, milk and banana or scrambled eggs on toast. Basically though, often breakfasts were huge because of the buffet element, everyone overate, so Lunch would often come around late as it would be a mutual decision to pause the excursion to eat, so whenever we were hungry or it was deemed convenient. Lunch was a combination of wholewheat breads, dahl, rice, vegetarian curry (often that cottage cheese based one), then dinner was similar or skipped. So I was eating very regular sit down meals instead of snacking, and when I did snack it wasn't a small meal (i.e. cereal, yoghurts), it was stuff on the road to often substitute a meal- crisps and chocolate usually.
I don't think I gained weight this way at all- I think all of my weight gain would have been the last week and a half in Goa and Mumbai when I ate a huge amount of cake, chocolate, alcohol, bread with PB and chinese take away food- genuinely gob smacked that this only came to a 3lb gain- maybe I even lost weight on the previous leg? I felt so bloated and fat though!
So this morning I measured my milk and realised quite how much I've been over hex'ing since my kitchen scales went out of juice. You guys were telling me to stop being lazy and buy new batts for months as well! But yeah... I think I was aware of what I was doing too and just bored of dieting and consciously cheating. Everyone knows the first thing to do when SW isn't really doing the job is to make sure you're measuring Hex's... So in my weeks of STS's and moaning about it, I can probably put it down to having about 6 of each Hex a day instead of 2
if 1 HexB of cereal is like 130~ cal, then I was sometimes having... 700 cal worth a day!? And that's without all the calories of milk and the bloody golden syrup I poured all over it!
Last night I measured the weight of fruit and fibre- a 2xHex bowl of 70g - it was TINY! I always knew that heavy cereals like that barely got you any bang for your buck of SW... But WOAH... That 2 hex bowl was like HALF the size bowl I was previously counting as 1 hex!! *****... I'd be having 2 bowls of that a day, pretending it was 2xHexb's when it was more like the equivalent of 8 hex's!!! NO WONDER I wasn't losing weight on cereal weeks! That is how one maintains- upping the Hex's!
The only time I lost weight was when I went carb free and cut the cereal out- because for once I wasn't eating 4x the amount I was supposed to! But seriously... Those two bowls of Fruit n' Fibre weren't even big, they were a standard size bowl... I was oblivious to the over eating completely as it didn't feel like masses. I can only imagine that people eat that cereal thinking they are making a healthy weight loss choice for breakfast and not realising they're having more than if they had pancakes...!
This morning I measured the SS milk I put in my tea - 60ml (I like it milky and I had a cup that holds 1.5 cups of tea) of the 250ml allowance for one HexA.
I didnt used to be a regular tea drinker at all until my 3 month travels earlier in the year where I drank tea to wake up better and aid my hotel room half arsed breakfasts; in Japan they're huge on tea, and even though I used to drink a lot of green tea (their fave), I mainly was having milky black tea for the caffeine. My mum always liked about a double portion of milk in her teas- super white- and I definitely took that on board as I started drinking tea. I really sweeten it too with 2 splenda pills in each standard cup - I like breakfast tea to be sweet and milky and not too hot - kinda milkshake like
it's more of a sweet treat than a remotely healthy drink...
Since returning in July I've been drinking loads of tea! I have a double sized disney mug which holds two cups of tea- I drink that in the morning and then maybe 1-2 more a day... So that's the equivalent of 4-6 cups of tea some days! And recently I realised that I over milk it even for my tastes as I just pour and then realise it's too white... In those double cups I probably have at least 100ml of tea... So that x3 = 300ml, already 50ml over for 1 HexA... Then I'd have probably 250ml x2 with cereal... And then I'd often throw in 30g of cheddar somewhere too :S
Guys, this is so retarded it hurts... I've been so clued up to what I'm doing but I've been ignoring it and expecting it not to be that bad... Jeeeeeeze.
So I'm not going to do any drastic no carb thing, I might even start introducing some rice into my diet (I've learnt for a fact that pasta, like white bread, just screws me up- I physically feel pain from it, so I'll be avoiding that) but I'm going to be a good girl and measure ALL my Hex's from now on... at least until I get a better grasp of what the measurements look like again- I used to! I used to guess then measure it and it would be nearly exact! But yeah, time to actually follow SW again after months of doing it half arsed. I'm determined to actually shrink for once
this year has been a 'battle' of losing the gain to get back down to where I was in Feb... Well now I'm almost there again so I'm hoping to actually shrink a bit
I miss that feeling of being smaller! I actually don't feel as slinky as I did before when I was this size...
I might start my arm exercises up again, even though they bother my knee
I need some small routine like that to do daily that I can manage and see results with...!
OK, another long post, full of 'duh' information
but I understand better now, so thanks for putting up with it lol!
I think I might start logging my food diary again to get a better view of what I'm eating. Jet lag has me waking up super early (6am ish) and eating lunch by 10 :/ which is confusing...
Yesterday my dinner was 100% veg and I made extra for tomorrow as well as a soup
I've actually been pretty vegetarian since returning as A) we only have frozen meat and I'm too lazy to defrost it- I only get off my ass to make food when I'm starving, so haven't bothered to cook properly (not good!) and B) we're kinda poor now so I'm going to eat more veg heavy meals (veg is cheap from local market) aaaand C) I've been reading up a bit about the hormones and antibiotics they laden animals with before they put it on the shelf, and how harmful it is to both our health and our weight loss... So it's kinda opened my eyes a bit to what I'm putting into myself... I used to eat a LOT of meat, so now I'm going to tone it down a bit. And the poor thing
Peace out x