As expected I continue to struggle.
I'm now back up to a little under 76kg after bottoming out at around 71.5kg in August following a successful three months of hammering my weight down from around 78.5kg; through a combination of low-carb, fasting and lots of cycling.
I think the rot set in when I discovered vanilla greek yoghurt and fruit in the summer which effectively ushered in the end of that particular low-carb venture. This was further compounded by the onset of home-made flapjack season in November and total powerlessness in the face of a rekindled baked potato habit.
Unsurprisingly I feel completely different to how I did in the summer; mentally I've lost any optimism I had and feel utterly defeated and lacking any control over my own future, while physically I'm flabby, inflamed, constantly bloated and generally just feel greasy as a consequence of the conspicuous shift from eating in a controlled manner when I choose to stuffing my face at every available opportunity for the temporary dopamine hit it provides. I've forgotten how it feels to be physically hungry.
The only saving grace in the face of this regrettable decline is that with the changing seasons should come more of an opportunity to get more exercise and get back on the low-carb diet, while I've gained weight at about 0.8kg/month yet when controlling my diet properly I was losing it at about 2kg/month.
It is demoralising to find myself back here however as I'd pinned my hopes on my new living situation allowing me more control over my diet, with hopefully improved mental health resulting in less comfort eating. I'd hoped to maintain a stable weight over the winter after the summer's progress, however this clearly hasn't been the case.
It's also disheatening to recognise how hard it is to lose the weight - perhaps as a consequence of ageing - the 0.5kg/wk loss over the summer only possible thanks to eating very little (mostly meat / fish / cheese / eggs with salad / veg), fasting for typically one or two days per week and covering on average 20 miles per day on the bike for around 800kcal burned. While this felt great ultimately this is unsustainable (especially in the winter) and I can typically only keep it up for 2-3 months at a time.
It's clear that currently my food intake is excessive. I suppose the only legit progress I have made over time is the quality of the food - I don't eat junk / highly processed food very often (other than the morning sausages on school days) and the quality of what I eat is generally good.
There was a time when I'd smash my way through massive bags of crisps, huge bars of chocolate or entire packets of biscuits at a time - which thankfully is a miserable low I've so far managed not to return to; other than the odd indescretion in times of proper misery.
Now at least my diet is fairly clean; consisting mostly of occasional breakfasts of soft boiled eggs on toast with black pudding and mushrooms, lunches of chicken and avacado, fish finger, cheese and pickles or corned beef and cheese with salad in wholemeal pittas, snacks of home-made flapjack, dinners of baked potatos with cheese and tuna or corned beef and coleslaw, battered fish and broccoli or the occasional potato bake.. desert of greek yoghurt, raspberries / strawberries / blueberries and pistachios..
Now the weather's (hopefully!) improving I'll look to bin off the carbs again - losing the toast at breakfast, moving back to salads for lunch, binning the flapjack and baked potatos (
) and ideally the fruit and yoghurt; although this is an especially hard sell as it tastes so good and I know is also nutritionally very good.
I've not yet eaten today and while hungry the improvement in how I feel physically is tangible - my stomach isn't bloated while I feel relatively "clean" and content for a change. I'd like to fast today but I think that's a tall order in the wake of all the carbs I've eaten recently and the inevitable blood sugar crash further abstinance will invite.
On top of all this beyond the various food allergies I think I have some underlying digestive issue, as hunger aside I always feel mentally and physically "better" when I don't eat, and often if I leave eating until later in the day feel increasingly good until I eat, then tangible worse after (foggy, unfocussed, ill-tempered)..
Meh.
EDIT: In totally unrelated news my emergency jar repository suggests that I might have consumed three kilos of mayonnaise in the near-year I've lived here...
I have stopped buying them and told guests to bring their own treats, with no spare treats for me.
