I shouldn't slack at this but work has been mad with board rooms and presentations and traveling galore.
Gold member now, it has been resolved.
I'm in the middle of the add a meal break week before I go back to Sole Source and I have to say it is not as easy or pleasant as I had anticipated. Nothing (the chicken breast and the cucumber) tastes as good as I had thought they would and it takes me forever to chew through it.... I'm pleased it's not a frenzy of taste buds being happy in a sense as it will make it a tad less hard to get back to Sole Source but I am still concerned that it makes me bloated, hungrier than normal (still in ketosis a bit though, checked it with a stix) and that monday will be hard.
Weight loss wise it doesn't seem to be going up yet. Knock on wood! So maybe my slow down of before will materialize in a sudden loss when I am back on Sole Source next week! Fingers crossed.
I'll only do one proper weigh-in and measurement at the end of the AAM week to see what the final effect was but all in all it's not as bad but not as good as imagined :)
Already! Yesterday I paid for Gold membership. I wanted to start a Cambridge support group and generally take advantage of the features they were promising. It wasn't even very cheap!
Have I become a gold member instantaneously as with any other site? No. Has anyone from their office get in contact about my complaint? A physical person not an automated ticketing mechanism? Nope. Am I a gold member now, 24 hours later? Still not. If it doesn't get sorted today I will have to make a complaint with PayPal and ask for my money back because the complete lack of support is unacceptable and makes the site's wonderful features useless if it is being managed as such!
About the diet: I'm on week 11 of 110% SS -next week is my bread add a meal break and
then on to another 12 weeks of Sole Source- and I haven't moved 100
grams in the past 4 days.
It's not TOTM, in fact, that was last week and I lost prior to it and even during but then it stopped.
Anyone had this happen to them? No chanǵes AT ALL in what I shake,
NO CHEATING in hell, had 2 mints and film mints instead of pill mints
and more water than usual but surely none of that can account for 4
days of not budging, can it? Any suggestions and reassurance?
I should say I am calm and not freaking out, I realize in the grand
scheme of things it is nothing and it's most likely water retention but
what would have brought that about and does it mean I will gain next
week on the add a meal break?
I'm slowly starting to get to grips with the fact that I will probably
put on quite a bunch in June when I switch to Atkins but the way I
figure it:
A. I'd rather do it properly, through and through and not worry that
the reason why things are progressing badly is the way I have
experimented with awkward combinations;
B. I'll be at an okay weight then, CD would have done its bit by then
-both shifted a LOT fast and given me the break from food I needed to
learn and gain perspective-
C. Long term, it is definitely the way to go for me.
I feel it's a rather mature decision on my part since the older-not-for-life-but-for-crash-diet-me would have become greedy and stood by Cambridge to September the 5th (our wedding day) just to look skinny then. However, I feel that being bigger for my wedding and needing a tad bigger of a dress is not ideal but it's irrelevant in the grand scheme of things so this is why I am contemplating risking 5/7 Kg more than if I didn't switch to Atkins in June.
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)
Some people asked what I am going to do for maintenance and I am almost ashamed to admit what I'm doing...
Presumably obsessing is what I'm doing. To sound less off my head let
me explain. Not only am I the OCD sort but if I don't read/understand
and learn everything there is to be read and understood about a certain
topic I never feel like I've done it properly.
So as a result, I've known before the diet, before Cambridge and even
before the calories counting I did for a few months before Cambridge
that to defeat my impatient nature and satisfy my obsessive side this
would require oodles of research. Last year in August when I decided to
do something about myself -cigarettes and body alike- I knew I had to
learn about the best diet for me and evaluated them all. I've started
with the calorie counting and exercising because I thought I could
first asses the rate at which I lose that way. It was good but not
sustainable or fast enough for my weight so I have decided to give
Cambridge a go after formulating a plan for an entire year, complete
with medical exams and ideas for maintenance and lifestyle changes.
That's just a bit of "why" I am so obsessed with maintenance today, 39
kilos away from goal, because in essence, it is "only" 4-6 months away
and I have so much to learn! I want to understand metabolic principles,
read the latest research and gather what each nutrient and vitamin will
do to my body. So it's not that soon for me to start assessing every
life/weight management plan I can think of. Which also answers the
question in this thread. Once I'm informed enough, I'm deciding how
I'll live for the rest of my life and find this extremely exciting!
The mister is at goal weight and this has prompted a weekend of
thinking what will life be like from now on for him and then for me. We
read and saw many a lectures on the various potential life and diet
managements, decyphered insulin resistance, considered the proportion
of exercise needed, how we'll attain this, etc.
Right now I am wanting to remember the following as extremely important:
- Whenever I will forget I am a reduced obese and start eating
intuitively I will get it back on. I need to be aware and conscious of
what I eat for the rest of eternity. For that, I want to get into the
habit of planning the weekly meals ahead -whether on Atkins or whatever
else maintenance program I chose-
- Exercise is vital. Not for weight loss or as a method to burn
calories but because it has vastly beneficial effects on my body. I
will find a gym I enjoy, a series of exercises I like and ensure this
becomes routine!
- A reduced obese needs to eat 20-30% less or exercise 20-30% more. I will most likely do the former.
- Evidence is mounting in support of Atkins being both healthy and
incidentally comprised of yummy things so right now it looks like there
will be one more full round of complete SS on CD till the 29th of June,
then a min 84 Kg weight achieved, 2 weeks of Atkins AND EXERCISE
induction and then OWL and a slow search of the CCLL thereafter for as
long as it takes.
This is scary as I have questions and questions as to how to make the
transition without piling up on the kilos but it ought to work.
So....
mandatory week 10 bragging episode. After being more than 110% SS for
all these weeks I have finally passed the barrier. Under 40 BMI. It
feels good. I used to look at tickers of people starting at 39 or 38
BMI and think "uh well, mine is nearly bloody 50, they don't REALLY
need it desperately!" I think I'm now just regularly Obese not Morbidly
Obese LOL
Sounds like little consolation but it's not.
I do feel slim too. Some days I feel so slim that when I catch a
glimpse of myself in a full body mirror I am rather surprised to see
flab :rofl: -Then I go on to have a depressive "am still huge! all this
work and am only at the weight some people have gastric bypass for" few
days, of course!
And yes, I am afraid of the week of AAM and of plateu-ing, and thinking
too much of maintenance (after reintroducing food I am considering
Atkins for maintaining) and so on but heck, this is the 11th week of no
solid food having passed my lips so that's got to count for something!
To everyone thinking 50/60 lbs later you'll be ecstatic.... maybe not
but you'll be on your way to having done more good for yourself than
ever, so keep it up!
Unofficial because I think it's time I had a proper Cambridge consultant not the one I sport now.
Anyhow, 107 so 2kg down so 4.4 lbs?
Not too shabby! And now it's really on! I have renewed purpose and
ambition, I feel great, I look better than ever in my adult life and I
will be a bride in August! We set a date and I NEED to be skinny and
maintaining by then!
Looking at this ticker it seems I'm nearly half way there!!!
,
NO CHEATING in hell, had 2 mints and film mints instead of pill mints
and more water than usual but surely none of that can account for 4
days of not budging, can it? Any suggestions and reassurance? 
