Eleven Weeks.

Well, the water weight game is continuing. It has brought me back up today to 197.8, and it's annoying as hell, because once again, the wondering starts, whether the diet needs tweaking or not.

I tend to believe not (yet), only because I have been taking an antihistamine for the the entire time the bloat has been hanging around, almost three weeks now. It's called Bonine, and I've been using it for the vertigo attack I got on January 12. Today is the 30th, and by Jan 22 the weight loss had not only stopped fluctuating, it started reversing. On the 26th I added Flonase, a corticosteroid, and that has also been associated with water retention.

I am not a happy girl. The obvious solution would be to stop taking Bonine (it's also messing with my thinking processes, big time), but then the room starts to jitter and jog. Wedesday I see an audiologist who will be performing the Epley Maneuver, designed to put things back where they belong so the vertigo can subside. The Flonase stops after today.

I literally can't wait to see this doctor. I will stop using the Bonine tonight so the effects wear off and I can tell better if the maneuver is working. If it does work, I can then gauge what the diet is doing under five pounds of water weight.

This is ridiculous.

Ten Weeks.

Weight loss has fallen to the wayside this past week, due to four obvious factors. I am loathe to admit I have gone up almost an entire pound, but there are lessons to be learned from this, and new obligations to be met. It was no surprise therefore, that the week's results are a stern 197. You reap what you sow, so to speak. On to the lesson! To recap the factors involved in this weight gain:

One: I have grown too comfortable. I've taken the diet for granted, and pushed the caloric intake too far, by several hundred calories each "up" day. This was ignored for some time by my body, but it has now caught up. I have learned where my limit is, and will now stick closer to it. (2300 calories on an "up" day is about 400 -500 too many).

Two: Any sort of exercise that causes DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) from exercise WILL cause water retention, for at least 4 days. I am still waiting for the water to release from shoveling snow for three days in a row.

Three: Cyclic hormones have an impact, and until I hit menopause, always will.

Four: Using an "up" day as a free eating day will not work, and I have taken steps so my husband will not overfeed me again on those days. He is an excellent cook, but steadfastly refuses to use lower-fat ingredients, and seems hurt when I demand small portions. Last night was stuffed pork chops and mashed potatoes, with ice cream for dessert. Yesterday's breakfast was a full plate of hash browns with four slices of bacon mixed in, and one egg. This is no excuse for my indulgence; but again, it is nothing I would have picked for myself if given an alternative beforehand. As a small caveat, it was a rare "football" day in my home, and a beer, along with two glasses of wine also made it into the day's menu. I won't mention the tortilla chips with salsa. No, I said I won't, and I won't...

Today is a "down" day, and I am grateful for it, although it may be hard, considering all the carbs I've been eating, which usually stimulate hunger.

I am confident a large loss will follow this week's overindulgence.

Nine Weeks.

Calculated at bmi-club.com

I am so stoked! This last week, I have reached a long-awaited milestone, all thanks to the Alternate-Day Diet. By the way, I am in no way a representative of the doctor or his plan. I have not been contacted by them, I am not paid, I have nothing monetary to gain by telling you how well this is working. And it is! Today's weigh-in has me at 196.2, and that places my body mass index (BMI) under 30! I am officially no longer obese!

Ask anyone who has ever dieted long term, and they will tell you the same thing: all diets work until they don't. This stoppage mostly happens to women, but sometimes guys too. This is how it plays out: you're going merrily along, doing the diet, losing weight, (hopefully just fat) and not cheating. You're working out, and making healthy choices. Maybe you feel better, maybe not. But then the scale stops.

All your effort continues, but the scale won't budge. It starts to seem your efforts don't matter at all once the scale stops moving. So you ask around to find out how to make the weight come off again. Folks will tell you to look to see if your clothes are fitting differently (looser), which indicates body recomposition. You can be assured it is very likely muscle gain (hardly ever). You can be told you've got to be patient, as stalls happen, and is not a problem until two weeks have passed (which are agonizing and feel like forever). And for the record, I never noticed my clothes fitting differently once a diet stopped moving the scale. If you're large-ish and no longer just 20 or 30 pounds overweight, it takes a proportionally larger amount of weight loss to change sizes. I won't even discuss the folks who just tell you you're doing the diet "wrong".

So using the comfort that I was losing slowly but steadily was taken away when my diets failed. Atkins was the worst, because I had done reasonably well with it for over a year. What did I eventually do wrong to make it stop? Nothing measurable. I have concluded in the years since it happened that it was completely and unfortunately out of my control. Others who have gone down this road have to deal with discouraging results and the echoing emptiness of spirit called failure. Nobody who doesn't diet understands – it is the nature of the body to vehemently counteract attempts to lose fat. All diets will fail in the end, because of the actions your body has taken to shut it down.

So what are you truly left with after diet failure? You're worse off than before. Because you've been dieting, you now have a body that has changed how it handles energy expenditure (has slowed down), and is working hard to regain lost fat reserves, even as you're still trying figure out a new way to lose. Usually that's when people go completely off the rails and eat whatever they want, because why the hell not if the diet isn't working? At that point, weight seemingly goes on twice as fast than before you dieted. It's just not fair.

And what if you have not been on the diet long enough for it to fail? If you have reached your goal weight, your body still thinks it's in dieting mode, does not realize you have effectively stopped trying to lose more, and continues to try and force the fat cells to refill. I have heard it takes years for a goal weight to become the new norm, if ever. I have no idea how hard maintenance is going to be, but I've heard it's actually harder than dieting because of the confusion dieters face as to "what's next".

Back to diets not working... When the leptin/ghrelin dance gets together with metabolic slowdown and decides to mess with your goals, no diet in the world can match it. Scales stop recording losses. Stalls happen. The gamut of well-meaning advice usually covers mixing things up with less caloric intake, different macro or micro nutrients, using a different workout method, refeed, etc, ad nauseum. There are more "fixes" to a diet than actual diets, it seems.

Again, what I have noticed by using the JUDDD method is there are no stalls that last over a week, even with hormonal changes. Even if you're a woman. Even if you're 50. Even if you (still) don't go to the gym and have a sedentary lifestyle. Yes, I said it. I'm still sedentary, and still losing weight. To reiterate, I do not lose weight easily. Yet now I am.

Regarding the methodology of the diet, I can't even call it true fasting, since I eat anywhere from 400-600 calories (usually around 500) on my "down" days. I figure if you're eating, it's not a true fast, so it's only the piston effect of calorie shifting that is doing the heavy lifting. I can only come to the conclusion that JUDDD really IS confusing my body so the leptin/ghrelin effect does not bother me for more than a day. It does not allow metabolic slowdown. It does keep the appetite low so willpower can work. My energy levels are good now, as it takes the body a few "down" days to adjust to much lower calories.

Working out while fasting is not a problem either, (from what I've heard). I actually may go to the gym today, since I really don't have to. (I have a rebellious nature, see previous post) And I've lost 17 pounds since November 14, the start of the JUDDD Experiment.

So after nine weeks, I have concluded this diet is no longer an experiment. I am confident this method is going to take me all the way to goal. It would be perfect if I could completely not focus on food until it's time to have a meal. That would be bliss.

Eight Weeks.

On January 6,  I measured 198.6 on my scale. I think that's a great thing, because I haven't been below 200 pounds since 2006, six years ago.

I am 201.5 today, because ghrelin (the hunger hormone) made an appearance yesterday by shouting "I'm fucking starving!" So instead of fighting the issue, I had a big refeed day. Over 2,500 calories, and if my body wanted that for one day in order to continue with the diet sanely, then it's gonna get that refeed. And no, I don't feel guilty. I wish it hadn't had to happen, but like I've mentioned before, the body plays nasty tricks with hormones once it starts giving up its fat stores. And it is. So nyah, nyah, ghrelin. I'm going to wait this out, because one day of hunger is  not going to derail me. Give it your best shot!

200 has also been a set-point for me in the past. It's a struggle to get below it, because somehow my body has also decided it's a comfy place to hang out, come-on, why-not-stay-awhile, and what's-the-big-rush? The scale has been bouncing around it since Dec. 27. Sooner or later it'll go, and good riddance.

This past week I've also noticed a weird sensation. When I put my pants on, I am no longer feeling quite so much belly when I zip up. I have been so fat for so long that my disappearing flesh is frankly, disturbing. It SHOULD be there, yet it's not. It's what I've been working towards, but at the same time, it is starting to make my body feel a bit alien to me. I can live with that, but it is a little freaky that I've been fat for so long that having a smaller body feels odd. I wonder how I'm going to feel when my legs aren't the size of fair-pig-sized ham hocks.

Going below 200 is also giving me access to a new milestone I will likely hit this week: I will officially be below 30BMI when the scale says 196. I will be out of the obese category and into the overweight category. This is not just another number on the scale, it's an entire category. I don't know when I bought into the whole "I am obese" mentality, but coming out of it is like emerging from a dark hole into a sunny place. I literally can't wait.

I recently bought a Tanita InnerScan scale to replace my old Tanita. It was not as accurate as the new one, and doesn't give me all the cool readouts. The new one does however, do one thing I don't really like. Double plus marks on the weight readout, indicating obesity. As if I didn't know. Really, Tanita? A flashing ++ on my scale when I check my weight is just a reminder of how much further I have to go, rather than a reminder that I've reached a significant amount of weight loss.

And yes, hitting 199 has also been significant, it is a total of 30 pounds lost since early July, when I started tracking with the bodybugg and started trying to bring my weight back into a semblance of normality.

I have a lot to be happy about this week. And it's all because of the JUDDD Experiment. Why give JUDDD all the credit? I was dieting for five months and lost 15 lbs. The other half of it has taken eight weeks, less than two months. I call that phenomenal.

Seven Weeks.

Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Eve were days I never intended to diet, so is it any surprise this week's weight loss total is a big zero?

Even so, the weight may have started and ended at 203, I saw 200 on the morning of the 31st. So Happy New Year to me!

Fast forward a couple of days later, and it looks like water weight is also showing up for the party, and the causes of this are confusing.

In my experience, any time water weight shows up on the scale, it begins the insidious process of derailing my diet, due to the upward trend of numbers on the scale, or even a standstill for a period of time.

Why the slowdown or uptick? After some looking around for valid solutions, I see different reasons listed, but no real proof. Some blame cortisol. Some blame hormones. Some blame tired adrenals. Some accusations include food allergies, sodium intake, dehydration, exercise level, and overall systemic health. Some just plain say it's your body taking a break. I see it more as a panic move, designed to keep the fat just where you deposited it. So it throws a few curves in there, one of them being bloat.

What to do about it? There is a bunch of information on the interwebs about how to shed water weight. Diuretics, more water, more exercise, less salt, no salt, no carbs, no wheat, more exercise, and the old standby: see your doctor.

The thing is, it'll probably go away by itself, unless it really is health related. Then by all means, the solution is to go see a doctor. Personally, I just need to wait it out, but over 3 pounds of water weight is annoying. It's hiding my efforts, and over time, will sabotage my commitment to the diet.

So... I'll drink more water, eat less salt, cut out some carbs, and sit down to wait it out. Damn.