This has been a better week overall. My vertigo is gone. My drug-induced stall is gone. I am happy (once again) to announce weight loss, and the scale today read 193.4. I am fitting into my not-quite-as-big-as-a-house pants, I look forward to the week's tally on the scale, and am starting to take my couch potato body in hand with small increments of exercise.
I re-purchased a Wii (I had the Fit board, but my daughter took the Wii when she moved), and am going to take some time reacquainting myself with Wii Fit. I am also waiting for EA Sports 2 to come in the mail, so I can, in the words of Emeril, kick it up a notch.
One thing I've noticed overall is when women lose weight, their girls shrink. On this diet, so far, mine have not. This is relatively unheard of with a 35 pound loss. I literally am still the same bra size as I was when I weighed 229, as in, my bras are still fitting roughly the same even though the rest of me is smaller.
I suppose it's because I'm one of those women who gain over all her body, top to bottom, so I lose it the same way. Maybe the boobs are last. I have no clue, but will definitely keep the blog up to date. I'm looking forward to the day I can actually buy a cute bra. They don't make cute in 40D.
So today is the day before Valentine's Day. It has been a tradition with my husband that we don't go out, we don't gift, and we don't do flowers or candy. We do however, make a splurge meal for ourselves at home. We have cooked bacon-wrapped scallops, lobster, bacon-wrapped filet mignon, and occasionally got ourselves some cheap caviar.
Unfortunately, this meal splurge falls on one of my "down" days, where I only allocate myself roughly 500 calories. Since January showed absolutely no weight loss, I don't want to slow things down again by having two "up" days in a row, yet Dr. Johnson clearly states in his book not to have two "down" days in a row.
He doesn't explain why. Is he concerned about energy levels crashing? Is he concerned about low blood sugar affecting brain function and/or triggering headaches? Is he concerned about birthing an eating disorder more severe than overeating, such as anorexia? Is he concerned about kicking the body into starvation mode and thus interrupting the cycle of up/down/up/down, or is he just assuming that a fat person couldn't possibly restrict calories for two days in a row without going on an eating binge? Does he think a dieter's willpower is in such short supply that two days of relative "hardship" is going to cause a meltdown?
Because of this lack of information (and shame on you Dr. Johnson, for having such a skimpy web site with no forum), I can only conclude quack science and go ahead with two "down" days in a row in order to shift my body over to an "up" day for tomorrow.
On leangains.com, the author says bluntly that starvation mode is not achieved until fasting is done for at least 72 hours. (See #4). He is one of the bloggers who have gone to the trouble read many relevant studies and scientific papers, and put it out there on his blog so the rest of us can benefit from his knowledge.
To recap, not only is the Johnson method NOT true fasting, two days is 48 hours, well under the limit for starvation mode to be activated. So in conclusion, I'm going to ignore the weak admonition of Dr. Johnson, because frankly, he gives no reason at all not to do two "down" days in a row.
The only limitation I can logically see is whether my appetite level will get uncomfortable. I tend to think not, as I've read other comments, responses and forums where people plainly state two days is easily doable with little to no discomfort. Ramadan is mentioned repeatedly, but I'm certainly not doing this for religious or cleansing reasons.
It seems a little ironic that I've doubled my "down" day so I can eat more later. That's not entirely true, since I'm doing it for my husband, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about it and had been considering it already.
So I'll comment next week on how effective (or ineffective) two days of "down" days were, and whether this can become a new tool, or if it's just another day of denial for no good reason.
I just wish I could stop thinking about raspberry pie.
No comments:
Post a Comment