05/19/2011 02:06
On Paying Pipers
Once the excitement of initial losses starts to wear off, the challenges to our focus start to happen. Social occasions, cooking for the family, stress, BED urges—all offer opportunities to get off track.
We may be approaching out program with plenty of determination and confidence, which is good. There is a backside to it, though: We may experience a little bit of over-confidence. I'm talking about the kind that happens, not when we are sailing along smoothly with great portion control, good choices, and regular exercise, but when we allow ourselves a little "extra" at one time or another.
An extra 200-500 calories one day. It's easy to freak out at that point, because past history may give us cause to believe we're at a point where our whole plan might fall apart. If we're still very determined, we'll get right back to our plan the next day, but still the guilt and doubt fill our heads. We go to a weigh-in, fully believing illogically that our one little indiscretion will cause us to not lose, or worse, to gain.
We get on the scale.
WHAT!? I lost the most I've lost since I started this? WOOHOO! I'm Queen of Dietworld, Master of All That Enters My Body. I'm invincible! I have greater confidence than ever!
And then, no sooner have we left the weigh-in, than starts the completely irrational thought processes. Let me see. If I lost more weight than I expected, even though I didn't eat entirely the way I had planned, it's true—I've found Diet Magic! So if that one hamburger with fries during the week led to the best ever weight loss, resulted in more weight loss, I can do it every week! YAY! I can have my burger and eat it, too!
So we do it the next week, too, and we still have a nice loss. Eureka! I've found it! True diet magic! It must be—I repeated it this week, too!
This is where it starts to get dangerous. Filled with false confidence, the one burger a week becomes a burger one day, and an ice cream on another day. Still we're losing weight, so aren't we the smart one?!
You can probably see where this is headed. Our healthy diet plan that counts on a 500-calorie-a-day deficit to produce one pound of weight lost per week, is suffering death by a thousand cuts. We continue having a bigger meal here, a bit of this there, and a bite of something else. Those calories add up fast, and they hardly seem like anything when we eat them.
So what's going on here? Why did that one burger and fries produce such a big loss that week? Well, it has a lot to do with how metabolism works. One larger meal per week will tend to stimulate metabolism slightly for that day, and part of the next. If we cut calories again the following day, there is no noticeable effect for the week. In fact, since the guilt the following day usually results in our possibly eating a hundred or so calories less than we would have, and we might have thrown in a little extra exercise as well, it's a wash. It's the same effect people see when they use calorie cycling to break a plateau or stall.
The danger is when we assume too much. One day that's a wash doesn't mean that we can get away with it several days per week. If we continue down that path, eventually it catches up with us, as our good habits deteriorate before they had a chance to become established. That splurge makes way for other splurges. That bite of the kids' leftover cereal makes way for our hand in the box for a straight fix. That one Hershey's Kiss leads to two. The BLTs catch up with us. They always do. Guaranteed.
One good way to prevent this is to log every bite and drop that passes our lips. Before we eat it, so we are forced to think about it before it goes in our mouths. If we must taste food as we prepare it, do what those skinny chefs you see on TV do: Taste it and then spit it out instead of swallowing.