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I spent a good deal of time yesterday reading down through a thread that was started by a person who was disappointed and frustrated that although she was exercising a lot and sticking to her diet strictly, her scale showed a weight gain of 7lbs. Well, an awful lot of people responded to her question, all good people trying to help I guess and I even added my tuppence worth i.e. keep it simple... Well, all the people with the big old words came down hard on that theory thank you very much! As for the poor woman who started the thread, she would have needed a doctorate in Nutrition and Physiology to make sense of that lot. Jeezuz, I look at myself and in terms of weight, where there used to be one of me, there is now two. It is not that I don't like my other half but it is time for us to part company. I know how it got there, like most people, it was because of the gazillion bars of chocolate that I put in my mouth like a wood chipper every evening. Now yes, I have an under active thyroid which I take medication for and I am taking medication which has a 'slowing down' effect on the metabolism but at 53 years of age, most people are not 100% healthy in every respect and of course there are underlying things that can impact on your weight gain and weight loss. But, the level of forensic detail that some people go into by way of explaining how the body deals with food is just excessive in my opinion. They say 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing' but it can equally be said, in some situations that too much knowledge is equally dangerous and seems to lead to an obsessive interest in the whole thing. I don't need to obsess over my weight loss. I just need to get on with it and without ever counting a single calorie I can tell you for sure that a woman who practically lived on a diet of white bread and cheese, gallons of coffee and mammoth amounts of chocolate to cap it off and who now eats a balanced meal with plenty of lean meat, chicken or fish, tons of veg, a smidge of carbohydrate and a small bowl of low-cal granola with fat free yoghurt in place of chocolate, there is no way I can gain weight. I have to lose because the contrast in what I am eating now compared to what I was eating is so monumental it has to work. A lot of people will say that what I am talking about is a calorie deficit and maybe I am but I don't want to think of it in that way. It is easier for me to just do the right thing without turning it into a mathematical equation. I can't exercise much because I am unable to walk or bend but I try to do something even when sitting down. I don't ever plan to go back to my bad eating habits so I need to have something in place that is sustainable for me if I live to be 80 (fat chance lol) So, my plan is fresh, healthy, locally sourced food with all things in moderation and in appropriate portions. Dance from my chair. Hop, well, hobble on to the scale every couple of weeks or so and take it from there. It is not rocket science and I don't know why some people feel the need to make it sound as if it is. Weight loss is not a linear thing. There are always ups and downs and the ups are a pain in the neck but in the end, irrespective of how our 'forensic nutritionists' go about explaining why your 'up' happened, I think the best thing to do is just park it up and move on till you reach your next loss and invariably that graph will show a constant downward trend. I don't know if anybody reads this stuff but I like having someone to 'talk' to and I do that by writing.
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