DAY SIXTEEN - JUNE 18TH
After having blogged about this topic for a few days, I went to hang out with my friends for a reunion of sorts. One of these friends, who also had blogged for a short while (and hopefully is returning to the blogging world soon), told me that she was proud of me and felt this was a brave decision for me to make, considering how personal of a subject this was. While I appreciated her praise, it did not occur to me that this was very personal. Granted, I'm admitting that I'm not terribly comfortable with my weight and I'm making drastic changes to fix this. But I am not talking about intimate emotional and mental details of how this REALLY affects me. You get to read about how hard it is to drink the Death Drink and wanting to eat and whatever, but there is a lot that comes with decision and some back story that I decided to avoid (because THAT would be personal, and I would be writing way more than I already do). On the other hand, while I do consider myself a private person, there are parts of me that I would like to vocalize for a larger audience so that perhaps they can learn or understand things that others will not admit. So in genuinely had not occurred to me that blogging about my experiences with this diet was personal until my friend had made this statement.
Now it's personal.
I woke up for work this morning and after five to ten minutes, I was crushed. I did what I had been doing every day for past five days or so and got on the scale to see what kind of effect the weekend had on me. 182 pounds...
182 pounds.
182.
How could this happen? Yesterday I was 177. I'll admit that maybe it was teetering over to 178, but either way, it was a gigantic increase and disappointment. Five pounds in 24 hours? How? How could this happen? I know that, from reading the last few posts, people can list: "Lasagna, Pound Cake, Ice Cream, Five Red Velvet Pancakes, Chicken Parmesan Hero, Arizona Iced Tea, and Beer. What did you expect?" I expected that these things wouldn't make me gain eight to nine pounds in three days!
I felt like a cheater. I cheated every person who I told about my 12-pound weight lost in ten days. To every person who read my blog, to the people I work with, to my family and friends, to everyone. All this work and it culminates in a total loss of four pounds. Lost thirteen, gained nine back. I got to see what I could be and then lost so much of it to the point where I felt like I was back at square one. It was a cruel game of Flowers for Algernon with weight instead of IQ. And, of course, I haven't lied about anything that has happened. Everything that I've stated on here, to the best of my knowledge, is completely true. I feel like I've cheated everyone, but I've never lied.
In discovering my weight gain, I quietly ate my Fruit Salad, a bit too tired to fully absorb what just happened but upset enough to not speak. When my mom asked me my weight, I told her and continued to stay quite. She tried to make me feel better, saying that there was not way I could possibly gain five pounds in one day and that the scale must be wrong. But I had used that scale every single day in the past five or six days and roughly every other day since this diet started. There was no way that the scale could be right for the first fifteen days and then magically be working incorrectly for today. There was no spin or explanation to make this work in my favor. I had gained almost all of the weight back.
I went to work today with a shirt that I had worn during my diet and now it felt a bit too tight. I had checked the mirror a few times within the day and it looked like I had gained my weight back. I could FEEL that it was back. And my heart even seemed to feel the pressure at times. I'm sure my heart probably went through a bit of an ordeal, having to go from consuming a drink for over ten days to all that food; losing and gaining all that weight back. I screwed this up and I screwed up my body. I might not have bragged excessively about my weight loss to others, but I felt like I lied to everyone, even though these people could see the changes on me. I am a phony.
So what happened, exactly? Yeah, I ate a lot, but I've eaten this amount before in a three-day period without such a drastic weight change. Yes, this might've occurred considering the circumstances, but then how exactly is this possible? Well, a lot of the initial weight lost was water weight, fine. But the rest? The real question is: If I was able to gain all this weight back in a matter of three days, how good was this diet? But it's NOT a diet, it's a cleanse. If I came off the cleanse at a time where there weren't two big events in three days, this would not have happened. Not to say that this is anyone's fault but mine, but I just did not see such a dramatic change taking place.
So what do I do now? What I do is work my ass off. I think that I can sit around, be lazy, only consume one thing, blog and tell people about it, and decide that I "worked hard" for this? People seem to be skeptical that I was able to do this, but honestly, anyone with a bit of consistency in their schedules could do this. I decided that I would go home and get on the bike and just ride it all away. I'll pedal 3,500 calories everyday for the next five days and see what happens. Anything to undo what I just did to myself. In the past month I was able to go two consecutive days on my bike for two-and-a-half hours each session. So, if I have to do three, three-and-a-half hours on the bike, I'll do it. I was able to just sit around and be lazy because I didn't have the energy. I certainly have the time to lose the weight, and lose it permanently.
Aside from just feeling angry, and eventually quite sad about it, what didn't help was that I had two people asking me about how the diet was going. And these people had every right to ask. I make a blog, I send the link to people, I post it on my Facebook, etc. But I can't admit to people, especially to my supervisor who watched me do this and try to deal with work everyday despite its effects, that I lost about 12 pounds and then gained two-thirds of it back. Obviously, she may read this and understand, but then she'll realize why I tried to talk as little about it as possible.
I got home and napped for about six hours (probably a combination of not having enough sleep from the night before and being overwhelmed with my failure) before waking up and trying to decide when I would get on the bike and what I would have to do to fix it. I eventually checked my stats from previous bike sessions and realized that the most I had burned in my excessively long bike outings was around 1,700-1,800 calories in 150 minutes. So, unless I was planning on doing five-hour biking sessions for five days straight, I don't think I would be able to get rid of a pound a day. However, I did read recently that, even with minimum activity, a male of my age and size burns at least 2,300 to 2,400 calories a day. So how do I combat this and get my body back?
Breakfast shall be a bowl of fruit salad every morning. (I friend who is way more health-conscious than I am informed me that it is probably healthier to have the cup of Arizona Green Tea with the bowl of Raisin Nut Bran cereal in 2% Milk, but I'm going to give this a shot and see where this goes. I've done the aforementioned plan before and it didn't work to my advantage as much as I'd hoped.) Lunch, if I choose to have it, will be either Orange Juice or some sort of fruit juice. Dinner will be vegetables - most likely salad - with meat. And this portion of meat will be half of what I used to have. And then I will get on the bike and pedal everything away. This way, I will still get in my fruit (breakfast, lunch), my vegetables (dinner), and meat (dinner) without eating excessively. I don't need the starches or the grains. And I will also have to drink a bunch of water.
So was my diet a waste of time? While its effects were a bit deceptive, this was not a waste of my time. First off, I got to see what I could be and how I could look and feel. Never having felt that way in the past five years, getting to experience that and then losing it shortly after is a BIG motivator. I also know that I can survive on very little, so there's no need to eat as much as I used to. Not only is eating in excess unnecessary and obviously adds weight, but it also can make you tired and prevent you from engaging in other activities that could help to lose the weight. This comes from trying to tone my intake back tonight, eating a bit more than I thought would be detrimental, and having to postpone my bike-riding session an hour or so later. With the Death Drink, I went to work, came home, drove long distances, visited friends, went to the beach, played sports, stayed up long days, and functioned like a mostly normal person. I also was able to deal with the good smelling foods and watching other people eat while I was not able to. I think that these experiences were crucial in showing me what I can and cannot handle and what I am capable of doing to drop this weight in a way that is permanent.
I managed to get on the bike tonight for over an hour-and-a-half and knock off 1,200 calories. In doing some math, this means that I was able to burn 2,300 calories from just being an active human, plus 1,200 calories from the bike, adding up to 3,500 calories burned. One must subtract the foods I had today (Fruit Salad, Orange Juice, Salad with Thousand Island Dressing, two Hot Dogs with Cheese and four pieces of Chicken with Barbecue Sauce and Cheese.) before coming to a total, falling short of losing a full pound, but I am getting smarter with my eating and decision-making skills now. I know that, if I redid today's meals, I would've had just one Hot Dog and two pieces of Chicken. I didn't capitalize on push-ups or sit-ups because last time I tried to go crazy and do 50 push-ups after having not done them in awhile, I failed to stretch properly beforehand and, after doing this for two days straight, could not use my arms without them hurting for about a week. After the cleanse/diet and jumping back into working out so drastically, I figured it would be smart to just stick with the bike, something I knew I could go into with no problem.
Needless to say, I will now have a bit of reporting to do to see if I can catch up. The goal is to see if I can drop five pounds by the weekend. If I watch my foods, get on the bike everyday for at least as long as I did today, then I should be able to take it all off. And while I should've been capable of doing this for as long as I've been home, it seems more possible for me to get this done now than ever. Despite how heart-breaking this was for me, I will not let this ten-to-thirteen day cleanse be in vain. I WILL get back on the horse - a different horse - and push on until I'm at the weight I want to be.
And, for the record, I got on the scale after having done the bike and found myself weighing in at 179 pounds. While on the diet, I had noticed that one night I was 180 pounds and the next morning I was 175 pounds. I don't expect that I will wake up and be 174, but I know that there is a possibility I can weigh even less tomorrow morning.
Today was a big hiccup, if you can even call it that, in my goal for weight loss. But now it will drive me to lose what I need to. The right way.
STATS:
Weight: 179
No comments:
Post a Comment