It's Only Five Simple Rules
Sunday, July 3, 2011 at 03:35PM
Jen

It's just such a big confusing sort of mess in here, innit? Originally, when I went with the floating my own boat thing, I had tried to make all the sections 'ship-like' hence, Crews Quarters, Lost at Sea, The Captain, etc but that's just not really working for me, especially since the penguin thing is all mixed up in there with the getsoutmore. I need something new. Or maybe something old. Ugh.

A few weeks ago, I read The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss and although the man may be certifiable for the simple fact of testing tons of crazy shit on himself, he actually makes sense and backs it all up. I'd recommend the reading of it.

I'm going to back up a little here.... After the lovely and successful liposuction two years ago, the doctor had switched up my meds to try and find something that would regulate my sleep better.  For the last few years I'd been sleeping 12-14 hours a day and was getting a bit sick of it so we went with something called mirtazapine.  And, although it's a totally scary drug, it worked like a hot damn. 

Except, it made me really really hungry and in the course of the first six months I gained 35 pounds.  At that point all the liposuction had gone to waist (see what I did there?) and man, was I pissed.  However, I tried to look at it with my usual sunny and irrational point of view in that the weight was more evenly distributed. So, that was good right? Cause, in theory, it should come off the same way.

I spent a couple of months on severe calorie restriction (1000 calories a day) but mirtazapine works in such a cruel and unusual way that I continued to gain 1/2 a pound a week.  Oh yes.  Irrational but true.

We, of course, ended up taking me off that drug (and giving me bennys, but that's another story).  Over the next two months, without any input/work by me of any kind, I lost 25 pounds.

That last 15 though?  Madly irritating.

Now we come back around to my point and Tim Ferriss' book.  I've been dabbling in the slow-carb diet over the last week, which is meant to reduce your body fat (I haven't tested it but I think it's about 25% at this point), and although the meals aren't bad at all, I've been having some issues in following the five cardinal rules...

Rule #1 - Avoid white carbs.  I'm going to assume the half a bag of tortilla chips I ate the other night during a salt craving violated this rule.

Rule #2 - Eat the same few meals over and over again.  Okay, not so bad!  The eating within one hour of getting out of bed is pretty hit and miss with me though and that's bad.

Rule #3 - Don't drink calories.  Yay!  I'm good here too. Except... low calorie drinks usually have lots of aspartame and that's BAD.  Need some tweaking on this one.

Rule #4 - Don't eat fruit. I'm good here too, since I usually don't unless I force myself to. However, I do juice so that's been suspended for a while.

Rule #5 - Take one day off per week. Good here too.  Although during binge day I ate a couple hotdogs, potatoes and a piece of herby bread with oil and vinegar.  Not so much of a binge after all. I'm a loser at binge day.

However, having said all that, I didn't lose any weight.  Why?  Because I have SNACK ISSUES.  Every night I've been eating 1/2 a cup of peanut butter mixed with 1/2 a cup of chocolate chips.  I don't know why, other than the obvious (I'm weak and a pig), but it seems to me that this little lapse may be the reason here that I'm not succeeding. 

And yeah, I laughed out loud at that last bit.

Oh well, it's a new week and that last 15 pounds (and the ability to fit into ANY of my clothes) doesn't care that I'm a weak pig. 

I'll let you know how week 2 goes.

 

 

 

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