It's weird to type in "Day 16", when there are only 21 days of the whole cleanse. It felt like these 21 days would last an eternity when I first started. Now it's day 16!
On Saturday, I weighed in at 189.6 lbs. Finally, I had broken the 190 barrier! However, on Sunday I was back up to 190.2, and then Monday 190.6. So I gained a lb back. Not sure how. I was pretty depressed about the whole thing, but then this morning I came in at 188.8, which was almost 2 lbs smaller than Monday. So that was nice to see. If you're keeping score at home on a Fenway-replica scoreboard, which I'm sure you are, I lost 10 lbs the first week, and only 2.6 the next. But the 3rd week, all 1 day of it, I've lost 1.8 lbs so I'm only .8 behind by 2nd week pace and 8.2 behind the first week.
My goal was originally 185 lbs. After I lost 10 lbs the first week, I figured I could get to 180 lbs, giving myself a little leeway for the inevitable gain afterwards. After last week's measly 2.6 lbs, I figured I could diet the rest of my life and make it to 180 lbs if I was lucky. I also decided to keep doing the cleanse for an additional week, depending on how well this week goes. I'll probably keep doing it until it says "179.8" on the scale and then I'll go scarf down .2 lbs of chocolate.
Actually, I will probably do the cleanse next week anyway, but add the "forbidden" fruits and vegetables back to my diet, like tomatoes and oranges. I can only drink so many beet/apple/cabbage juices. I'll continue to abstain from pasta, bread, dairy, and sweets. On May 1, we go on vacation, and then I will start adding everything back in. I'll probably start small, like with 6 slices of cheesecake, and then work my way up to my usual diet.
The biggest thing about this cleanse is that I've learned how to be hungry. Before, I'd feel a pang of hunger and go find a snack, as if I wouldn't survive the next 2 hours if I didn't satiate it right away. Now that I only eat one meal a day and don't snack, I feel the hunger pains every so often - mostly in the hour or 2 before lunch and sometimes in the late evening or afternoon - but I just learn to ignore it and it goes away. Which means my previous problem with having salads for lunch (being hungry after an hour or 2) is something I can cope with. I hope to eat salads for lunch, but not every day, and then portioned dinners.
I don't really like large dinners anyway, but there was always this pressure to eat as much as I possibly could to minimize leftovers/wastage. So I was cramming all this food in and not enjoying it after a certain point.
My point here is that a post-cleanse controlled diet is much more doable than I originally thought. I just need to minimize the snacking, eat controlled portions, and think smarter about the ingredients. Why do I always get cheese on my burgers? I can barely even taste it. Instead of a double-patty, I can probably just do one.
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