Now that we are a day away from our first year wedding anniversary, how has it been a year already?!

and a few weeks from our vacation, I’ve been back on the weight loss train for a few months in the attempts to get back down to my pre-wedding weight.

My recent daily Time Hops have been a fun reminder of the days leading up to the wedding.

A year later, I’ve tried adding and cutting back on certain things in my diet that I hadn’t previously tried and I’ve also found myself in a similar pattern that I was stuck in last year, don’t eat enough all week, binge, repeat cycle!

What led to binges:

Not.enough.carbs. 

I completely restricted my carbohydrate intake to around 65 grams a day, when I should’ve been having AT LEAST  130 grams a day not even factoring in the extra I needed for 4-5 workouts I did a week. So the pattern was eat ‘well’ for 7-12 days, have a 3000+ calorie carb binge.  It would start out with a few handfuls of cereal, then a small bowl – then 5 small bowls which led to, any form of bread with lots of peanut butter, half a bag of vanilla goldfish, oreos, I’d check out the freezer, see what kind of ice cream we had in there, you name it- if it was a sugary carb I was all over it until I was sick to my stomach and would end up consuming 350+ grams of carbs in about 20 minutes! Since I did this in the evenings, going to bed at night was painful because my stomach was so full I couldn’t get comfortable, and my stomach made me pay for it the next day, it was agony! So I’d completely restrict intake the following day then ‘back to normal’ the next day, and repeat cycle 7-12 days later. You’d think I’d learn my lesson, but when you restrict your body of what it needs, it takes over!

Not eating enough carbs also comes with-

Not.enough.calories. 

You always read about when trying to lose weight, never go below 1200 calories and I’ve heard so many times from different fitness professionals, their clients are working out like crazy eating a low amount of calories and not losing weight, when they start eating a bit more, the weight falls off!

All or nothing approach.
I also struggle with being able to be ‘normal’ with my diet.  When I’m trying to lose weight I’m really strict and completely avoid anything processed, fried, or full of sugar, and when I’m off I’m completely all for it!

I lost about 16lbs to get to the weight I got to before our wedding which was probably the smallest I have ever been in my life and definitely not a realistic or sustainable weight for me.  After the wedding and up until about May this year, I was eating anything and everything I wanted to make for the 8 months of not eating enough, so I gained back the 16lbs that I lost and gained another 6 on top of that to get to the heaviest I have ever been.

So here we are today, I’ve lost 14lbs and am still unfortunately succumbing to frequent binges.  They aren’t as bad as they were last year, but they are still a clear sign I’m not getting enough to eat.

I have started eating a lot more oily fish which have helped keep me fuller for longer, and also get the omega-3 benefits.  I have learned that cereal is a trigger food, and if I even have a small handful it can and usually leads to the uncontrollable spiraling to eat everything, so I have to avoid it.

I recently got some work with a pharmaceutical company that Greg used to work for, they are selling sports nutrition products, and wanted a nutritionist for support and to help educate people on healthy eating.

After digging back into my sports nutrition books and reading about how exercise increases your requirements for basically all macro and micronutrients, it’s not surprising why my body wants all the carbs. Doing mainly high intensity interval training, the only source of fuel that your body can use for that is muscle glycogen, which is carbs in its simplest form or energy from the breakdown of muscle. You would have to be continously supplying your body with carbohydrates with fuel so those sources aren’t all used up and muscle isn’t broken down.

Going crazy on vacation

Once the restrictions are off and there isn’t anything off limits, the re-feeding is taken to an extreme. The biggest thing probably is that if I know I’m only going to be eating at my dads house and all our favorite restaurants on our vacation once a year, I feel like I need to make sure that I eat everything, especially things that I feel like I’ve been missing out on throughout the year, like these!   Biscuit and gravy chips!!!

What I really need to keep in mind is that I don’t have to be in the clean plate club with every meal. I don’t need an appetizer AND a dessert. I don’t have to go crazy with all the new snacks I want to try. Once we are back from vacation I don’t need to continue eating like I’m on vacation for the rest of the year.  Working out on a regular basis my body needs the right fuel and restricting anything is only going to be counterproductive in the long run as time as shown.

Let me know if you guys have any other tips that help you out. I’ll report back on how it all goes 🙂