A problem and a solution

In the last few days, since my birthday I've been having 'treats' as if it was still my birthday almost. As a consequence, I've been gaining weight. I've been here before, so have many dieters. So the solution is to 'punish' myself by that activity that I hate - exercise. My intention was to lose weight without exercising, which I still think is possible, but now if I'm above that green line on the graph any day, for that day I have to go running. The time that I need to run is the number of minutes equal to the number of times I've been over my limit in the last 14 days. I fully expected to go for a run today, but fortunately I was a smidgen below the line today. To prevent my running now and then in the future, I'll have to be below the line by a safety margin, to allow for variation in weighing values.

Birthday gain

I was looking forward to seeing how my new system (trying to be a specific weight each day) went, and I was pleased that for 5 days, it went well. Then I had my birthday, and I gained weight, but I'm 'allowed' that, I think that even on a diet, you're allowed to over indulge on your birthday. I'm not sure how much I put on, probably about 300-500g.

However, the surprising thing is that today I over indulge again. I have just started at university again, last time I started I put on weight, I have to make sure that it doesn't happen this time too. I bought some white chocolate today, I hardly ever buy that, so something is up with me.

All is not lost though, I'll keep on having the whey powder and fruit, and see what happens. I'm not doing any exercise, though I think maybe I should, just to improve my quality of sleep.

New system

I have decided that I should change the way that I lose weight. Let me explain. I go hungry, eat protein and try to not have treats. That's fine, but the amount I lose each day (or week, or month) is relatively uncontrolled. That's because I generally try my best and that's it. The plan was to lose about 100g a day until I finished.

The plan seemed fine until one of life's changes came along - not a good change, but one nonetheless. I'm not yet ready to divulge to a great degree the intimate details of my life, so apologies if I don't yet tell you. Anyway, that change meant that there was less demand on me to lose weight in a prompt manner. So I have decided that I'll do it differently - rather than lose weight as much as I can, I'll slow it down and have some control on the process.

Because I weigh myself everyday, I decided that I want to weigh a specific weight each day, as close as possible. If I weigh more, I go into diet mode. If I weigh less, I don't go into diet mode. I repeat this process many, many times until I have trained myself to maintain a constant weight, eating well but not gaining. That will take months, no doubt just to train myself.

Another concern is that I reach my goal weight, and what happens? Will I bounce back? I did that in 2001, although there were external issues providing stress in my life.

So my plan is to start off, losing a small amount each day (50g - 350g a week) and slowly increase this until I find it more and more difficult to keep up. When I reach this value, I stay there (or reduce if I am having major problems) until I am 90 days away from the goal. I figure 90 days, 3 months is a nice short period that most people can tolerate. There I will stay, always being 90 days away from the target weight. In other words, the closer I get, the slower I lose weight.

What this means is that I will theoretically never reach my goal weight, although I am sure I will reach it sometime in the future. But it will mean that there won't be a 'bump' as I reach my goal. I won't have to change my eating as the change will be so small that I won't notice it. Anyway, that's the plan. One disadantage of this system is I never reach my goal, so I can never say "I've made it!". But I decided that if I'm 1kg away, I'm pretty much there.

So today, I want to lose 50 grams. Tomorrow, 51, etc etc. I'll graph the amounts weekly so people can see where I'm at. Yes, it adds time to losing weight, but I've been here so long, I don't really care.

A trip away often means putting on weight

Well I was losing weight nicely thanks then I have to drive to my home town 6 hours away to discuss things with my father. However, as often happens, I eat way too much on the drive (I'm almost always alone) there (and back, after all, if you eat a lot there, you might as well eat a lot on the way back). Plus I treated myself to fattening foods while I was there, meaning I ate out a lot, hence my 500g-1kg gain.

This is not a terrible situation, just a week or two and I'll be back to where I was, but I need to train myself not in over indulge. So my goal for the next few weeks is to lose that gain, and then I'll be happy with myself again.