Aches, Pains and Coping Strategies

Yanno, anyone who says Cambridge is easy peasy and a walk in the park body wise is lying.

For a diet on the exact same everything one's tummy does considerably strange things! Extremes are far from unusual, either too much or too little with little connection to anything than maybe water consumption, seems to be the norm.

And if that's not enough then factor in the muscle cramps, the sudden tiredness, the twinge of depressive thoughts, the unexpected bone pains in parts that seem to have lost the most weight and the eyes issues and you may have a more clear picture. The hairloss and bad breath are not looking like the worst side effects! :)

Don't get me wrong, it's all worth it! If nothing else then CD gives you the certainty that the scale WILL go down even when it hasn't budged for a few days (how sick am I that I gleefully think of any stall as my body wanting to surprise me with a bigger loss? ). There's no second guessing yourself about amounts of calories or carbs you've had yesterday, no wondering if that was indeed enough exercise. If your scale is stubborn today it's SOLELY because you're holding on to water and THAT one certainty is worth all the aches and pains.

Now for the strategies. I keep thinking I wrote this before but nonetheless:

- Ice. Make your almost-ice-creams from your shakes. We did. In fact, with the excetion of the lunch shakes at work, everything other was either very cold or downright frozen and it sure as hell makes life that much better.
- Avoid food porn. Or crave it. One of the two. I found when it comes to food, only one of two extremes works for me to avoid cheating. One of them is complete avoidance. I don't look at it, think of it, read about it or even acknowledge it exists! This one works a charm but it's harder to do in real life what with all the stores and the real people eating real food. Or the reverse. Look at it, drool if you must, sniff it to exasperate the normals that will be eating it, imagine tasting it, touch it, buy it for others, pass it while hot in the stores and YET think to yourself "I won't be one of the shmucks that will fail, ain't no thing, can even smell the cryptonyte!"
- Don't count any days "such and such till I have a week of break" or "only 34 days to Xmas and I need to wear the new dress" but pounds. If you must have a ticker -and obsessively check it every few hours, as you do- make it about weight not time. It's not a week or a few months, it's the rest of your life you're working on here.
(to be continued)