Last month, I had reached my limit with calorie counting.
It wasn't the counting that I hated, exactly. It was that, no matter what I did, I was no longer losing weight. Spending months with the same number staring back from the scale was making me angry, irrationally so, and it was translating into anger with myself. There was so much blame.
I just couldn't break 173lbs.
So I did what any flighty, hyper-emotional person would do. I said Screw it! and stopped counting. And, oh, I started eating whatever I wanted.
I ate cake. I ate cookies. I drank more Mountain Dew in one week than I have in months. The scale didn't change... until, of course, it did. In a big way.
After a little over a week, the scale registered a sudden and unrelenting 180lbs. I was staggered, and not, all at the same time. I should have gained weight. I know how this works. But that much? And now what?
The results, though ugly, might have been what I needed. Right there, I had proof that my diet had been working, though perhaps not as well as I wanted it to. It was keeping the weight off, maintaining at my as-of-yet lowest weight of 173. That's worth something.
Lesson #1: After a year of being on a reduced-calorie diet, eating lots more makes a great big difference, very quickly.
The next day, it was back to calorie counting. Re-committing, trying to undo the weight I'd managed to gain in such a short time. Within days, I'd learned a second very important lesson.
Lesson #2: Weight gained quickly can come off just as quickly.
I dropped eight pounds in a week and a half. Yep, I broke through to 172. Finally.
My take-away from this experience is two-fold. Temporary weight is simply easier to lose. I'd been told this before, that an entire lifetime of obesity would make it so very much harder to drop the pounds, but I never entirely understood the reality of it. And I discovered that sometimes, a break really is the best thing for the body.
Could I have been making progress these last three weeks, instead of mucking around with pounds I didn't need to gain in the first place? Maybe. But at what cost?
For now, I've doubled down. I need to; I picked up my wedding dress on Tuesday and it's veeeeeery snug. I need to drop around ten pounds over the next few months in order to make it a reasonable fit for September. But I'm looking forward to a very delicious cake that evening, and I plan to eat my way through the honeymoon.
Sometimes, life comes first. Until then, goodbye cake. I'll see you in September!
