Not that this is what this blog is about 🙂 , but since my goal is to catalog my life and in it my journey to financial independence for myself I’m going to talk about it anyway. Diets. What we eat. Like a lot of women I’ve always had an issue with my weight: no matter if I was 150 or 180 pounds (shaking my fist at you society!). I’ve tried to lose weight almost consistently for about 13 years (and I’m 27 🙂 ). They have never worked. I’ve starved myself down to 125 – seriously, I ate 100 calories a day for three months, which is about the number of calories in 1 egg. Dumb, but it worked. I just didn’t realize that my body was mostly eating my own muscle so even though the scale was dropping I still looked plump because I had mostly lost muscle. Disappointing. That was the most ‘successful’ diet I’d ever been on to that point. Prior to that I would try to count my calories, be hungry, have headaches, not be able to concentrate and eventually give up and gain any weight I had lost back – and then some.
I had accepted this as my norm about a year ago and said to hell with it. I would rather be fat and happy – so I ate and drank whatever I wanted. This only became a problem when I started to not fit into my clothes because as you know: I refuse to buy new clothes :). I guess I have to change my body instead. After exploring a lot of options I was at home and my Mom suggested I try eating how she has been eating and successfully losing weight and keeping it off for over a year: low-carb, high-fat. I talked about that in another post, but my update is that I am now a lower weight after three months of eating this way lazily than I was after starving myself all of last year. I rarely feel hungry, all my food is delicious and this has never been easier. I feel so stupid, but you live and learn. I started this journey at 177.5 lbs and as of today I am 164 in about three months. Mind you three weeks of that was spent eating and drinking whatever I wanted in Thailand and another week of the same in Phoenix, but after a week all the weight I had gained was gone after each trip (water weight?). It’s absolutely insane.
I feel so fortunate that I’ve finally found a way of eating that I enjoy and is helping me get to a healthier weight. This hasn’t involved any exercise outside of my usual walking and virtually no decrease in alcohol (I guess I would have lost a lot more without it 🙂 ). For the first time I’m on a sustainable diet. I feel a lot better when I don’t eat as many carbs and I’m excited to reach about 150 lbs at least (when my BMI becomes “healthy” – not that BMIs are great measurements but still) and then start eating maintenance calories. What am I going to do with an extra 400 calories a day? Whipped cream anyone? 😉