Beginning of 2020 Long Journal Entry.
Back from my Super-Duper-Amazing-Great 10 day vacation in San Antonio with friends. Brought back a few extra pounds, was exploring pros and cons of the new diet I invented just for the Holidazes, the HCHFNE Diet (High Carb, High Fat, No Exercise) Diet. Pros: You get to eat anything you want, as many calories per day you as you want, as many sweet treats as you want, and you don't have to exercise. Cons: You bring back five extra pounds.
My friends keep a way different food supply than I do. Took my bike, but needing repairs and I have a favorite shop in Austin that I prefer to take it to. So, only a few short rides. Bike into shop today, on the trail again by the weekend. There are some new mtb trails in Austin that I just discovered, good places to pick things up again.
I try to avoid getting overly concerned with the numbers on the scale, although everyone likes to see those numbers come down. I place more importance on what my calendar averages and totals say - deficits. With my little 10 day vacation, Dec. is the first month not showing strong deficits.
Before Thanksgiving, I had been off refined sugar for almost a year, seems like pumpkin pie might have been the precursor to some Xmas back sliding - way too many sugar-flour treats. I don't think there's anything wrong with eating sweets (made with highly refined sugar & flour) - occasionally and in moderation, especially if one does a lot of fitness. A physically active body just burns it. Glucose is glucose, whether it comes from high fructose corn syrup or organic strawberries. It burns the same.
The problem with refined sugar-flour is that they are highly concentrated, extremely fast carbs. After a long ride, when I'm seriously hungry, it may take me 45 minutes to take in 800 calories from my super organic veggie stew, which is crazy tasty. But, I can plow through 1200 calories in 15 minutes with just four sour cream cake donuts. Therein, lies the problem with refined sugar - too many calories, way too fast, huge glucose spikes, insulin spikes, fast brain glucose saturation. The other problem with sugar is that it can trigger cravings, with me anyway, and cravings for anything are not a friend of weight management, unless one has some innate herbivore DNA, craving Kale.
That's the unhealthy part of refined sugar, for me. Way better to get slower calories, even slower carb-glucose, from healthier foods. I've lost my footing with sugar treats over xMas and need to launch back into refined sugar abstinence again.
Goals for Jan 2020: Give up the sugar again. For me, it seems to take about 90 days to totally break the cravings. I would also like to make a go again and see if I can get fat macros under 20%. I tried this in Nov., made it about 2 weeks, fell off. Fat macros are in 40% plus range, too high. Get bike repaired, resume riding, explore those new trails, regain my deficits as reflected in my calendar averages and totals.
I'm very diligent about logging all food. I work toward those monthly deficit averages and total numbers. My goals are to keep those numbers in a deficit. A number produced on the scale is never my goal. The scale always follows those numbers.
What I've learned in 2019.
Focus on the right goals, the plan, don't put your focus on a number on the scale. The number on the scale is fickle and the scale is always an indirect measurement. There are better measuring sticks for health, weight, fitness progress than a number on the scale, i.e., body transformations, muscle tone, clothes fitting better, having to buy smaller clothes, feeling better, looking better, gaining confidence, seeing results in the mirror, people noticing weight loss, many, many things show progress. The scale is the least reliable measuring stick and IMHO, can easily trigger anxiety and obsession. I purposefully only weight myself once per week, for those reasons. Measuring the fluctuations are useless to me and really solid weight loss happens over time, not in a day.
Make a plan, monitor and follow the plan, rather than the scale. If the scale is not moving, the plan is either ineffective or you are not doing the work to stick with the plan. If you are finding you can't stick to the plan, it needs to be modified, it may be the wrong plan for you. Whatever plan you do, less food, more energy expenditure through fitness, or a combination of the two, the plan must produce an average daily deficit, which can easily be tracked on the FS Full Diet Calendar, Daily Averages, Totals. It really doesn't matter what you do to get those numbers showing a deficit, that is the one most cause and effect variable to weight loss. For me, macros really don't matter, food doesn't matter, exercise doesn't matter. What matters is producing those deficits, however I go about it. The scale always follows those numbers.
The only way to get an honest read on those numbers is, you got it - log all food and activity. I really never log my food for accountability, although that is useful to get that feedback on what type and where calories are coming from. I log it because it's the only way to see accurate deficit numbers. If I'm not being honest with those number, then I'm not being honest with weight loss.
And, for God's sake, feed yourself, most especially if you regularly exercise. The body evolved to eat food for energy, but it also evolved to use it to fuel activity. Moreover, when the body evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, there were no sugar, flour factories, there was no commercial and industrial farming, pumping chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides into our food supply, there were no processing factories irradiating food for extra shelf life, pumping thousands of preservatives and artificial chemicals into our food and water supply. Digestive systems did not evolve to know what to do with that stuff. Clean digestion is also a huge factor in weight management. [end clean eating rant]
Netflix didn't exist when evolution produced our food-energy systems. Evolution produced all living organisms' food energy systems to fuel activity, some brain activity, but mostly physical activity. Historically, finding and preparing food was the balancing mechanism. Driving through a fast food place, ordering pizza delivery, ordering curbside delivery is not evolution's idea of finding and preparing food. Get moving. That's what the body was built to do. That is natural weight management stuff, regular movement, walking, dancing, swimming, tennis, hiking, rowing, singing. Evolution produced the human body to do that stuff. Evolution and food-energy systems didn't evolve in conjunction with Netflix, computers, driving, etc, so the natural body has no frame of reference for managing weight or energy in those situations. The body intuitively knows what to do with food when we keep moving. Food is natural, food is good, food is fuel, food is not the enemy. If there is any enemy, then it might be over-eating, eating too many unhealthy foods, and refusing to invest in some form of regular fitness.
Feed yourself, invest in fitness. Starvation diets are never long term solutions, and they come hard wired with unsustainable problems for most people. Eat healthy fuel, find something in the way of fitness to keep regularly in your daily life, it doesn't have to be extreme. Invest in those long range life style changes and the scale will move. Gradual is longer lasting. Slow and gradual wins the race. And have a Great 2020, ya'll.
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