The Scales: a dieter's santa ('have you been good?") ... but what if santa is a fallacy?

Hi guys, just a quick note to say that i think i'm going to be avoiding posting for a bit... I've noticed i've been weighing myself everyday for the last while (I weighed myself twice today - i was still 70 in the morning but when i was changing into my gym clothes at 1pm, had jumped up to 71. So i'm not going to weigh until monday, so i know what i have to do. It's all about learning to trust your body to do the right thing, and not relying on the unreliable scales to tell you 'when you've been good') and have been totally focused on losing weight - i think the trick is to stop thinking about it (sigh) before i get obsessed again and can't have a normal relationship with food. The weight always seems to drop off when i'm not thinking about it...So i'm going to try and distract myself for the next week.

Will post up again next monday to let you all know how i'm going.

Love Nikki

Still chugging along...

Here's my post from this morning:

"Well, despite all my quibbles over the last few days about whether i had broken my famine reaction or not, and what was going on - today i woke up and felt ready to tackle those next 5 kilograms!!!

So here i go again... and if my starvation response kicks in in a few days, then i know i was mistaken and have to wait a bit longer... let's hope i don't as i'm keen to slim down nicely!"

Well the starvation response was still alive and kicking this afternoon, and i started to panic about having to cut down my food intake any more. I guess I need to stay on maintainence a bit longer.... DAMN! Just have to keep remembering that it's only going to be harder if i try to do it now. ANd i need to focus on eating what my body wants, and not what i know is a "diet" food - i confess that this morning that has been all that has been on my mind, trying to reduce my daily caloric intake to as low as possible - which we know is not the way unless i want to binge my way up to HIGHER than 80kg.

I've been thinking, though, this last month i have been eating nowhere near like how i was eating when i had my first 5kg loss at the beginning (80-75) when i was on 'maintenance' and my body stabilised back to the weight it should be. I guess i just need to go back to that, but its so tough to do...

Well, i'm going down to have my coffee and 2 bikkies that i've been holding back on having all day...!

Love Nikki

PS: just started on a the "couch to 5 kilometres" thingemy today (www.c25k.com) with the podcasts. Starting at week one, as you are supposed to, and actually finding it reasonably easy - i think probably because I could already run a bit. doing an interval alternation of 6.5km/hr and 12km/hr - and pushing myself to do 16km/hr for that last 60 second interval. For some reason at the 6th interval i started feeling really dizzy and ill - i think it was cos i was trying to get lots of oxygen into my lungs and might have ended up hyperventilating!!!! so i had to stop the podcast for 2 min and walk at 4km/hr to walk it off, then started again. Silly me!

PPS: what i am finding strange, however, is the fact that i'm holding complete abhorrence for the idea of having a croissant right now. I know that sounds strange - but If i'm having a starvation response thingemy, then shouldn't i technically be craving that sort of stuff? nevermind, i guess i can't hurt to hang maintaining until i'm sure...

My fluctuating weight

Haha... my blog post today sounds like an episode from Scrubs... gotta love that show.
Just thought i'd put up a slideshow of my journey, to remind me why i'm determined to knock this binge eating and famine reaction on the head...



Went out last night for dinner in the end to catch up with a friend. Started out with the healthy option - was craving seafood, so i had a delicious grilled octopus salad. But as the night went on, i knew i was still hungry. So we stopped by McDonalds and I had hot chips and one of those mini snack wrap thingemies. Goodness it tasted good! And perhaps tasted even better because 1) i didn't have the guilts about it, 2) i was actually hungry!
And since i went home and had a few more squares of chocolate with mum, i know i probably went a bit over the recommended caloric intake. But i don't care, because i know that my body will automatically regulate my hunger and desire for foods today to suit...! And sure enough - i had the best night's sleep in ages, because i didn't wake up in the middle of the night hungry. I never let myself eat in the middle of the night - because i've never done it, and i don't ever want to start, because that is probably the worst thing you can do to your body! Hahah, except that time last Easter when i must have been so ravenous that i ate my entire 200g lindt chocolate bunny in the middle of the night whilst still asleep!!!!! The chocolate stained wrappers smeared all over my pillow were a good indication as to who had eaten them... If anyone is reading this post, what's the weirdest thing you're body has ever done when it was starving?

I'm just waiting for my lunch to do down now so I can go for a walk. I'm getting that kind of "itchy" feeling in my legs, like they want to move.

I think i ate a bit too much at lunch. We had a Greek salad with olive-oil-and-garlic-toasted bread. I would have been fine if i hadn't finished with this cappucino...

Chocolate cravings seem to be all gone today. Must have given my body enough of the fatty/sugary goodness it needs to shutup about chocolate. So yay for that!

Take care,

Love Nikki

PM Update: Well, after lunch i was waiting for the energy to come to do some exercise (didn't do any yesterday)... and waiting... and waiting... and it still neglected to come! In the end i grabbed a snack, and waited an hour - the dizziness went away, but then did some pilates and was extremely tired. I HAVE to eat more... i'm really struggling doing it because of my paranoia of weight gain, but otherwise i'm not going to be able to try and lose weight again - or worse, i'll have a binge. No binges since Nov 2007, so lets try and keep it that way! Well, I was extremely grumpy in the hour or two preceding dinner after (unfortunately) FORCING myself to finish that pilates - but was happily rewarded with a huge bowl of steaming mussels/prawns/squid/fish in a lovely white wine and tomato broth with garlic aioli - and managed to beat down my fear of carbs, yet again, by having not one, not two, but three slices of bread! Didn't actually require much forcing, actually, as i was craving bread like mad - and it was fantastic with the garlic aioli. I actually reached a bit of a compromise with the aioli which worked really well. Still having a paranoia about olive oil (usu. make aioli with no oil!!!), so here is my delicious compromise.

Garlic Aioli: 1 clove garlic (crushed), 1 tsp salt, 1 egg yolk, 1 tsp dijon mustard - whipped with an egg beater. Slowly pour in about 30ml of olive oil whilst continuing whipping, and then juice of half a lemon. With a fork, whip in 3/4 cup fresh plain yoghurt and cracked black pepper to taste... ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!

Distraction from niggling thoughts of chocolate...

I've eaten a lot today. Not a lot lot. But a lot. More than usual. Maybe i should write it out:

- handful of muesli, milk and 1 pear
- 2 crackers with cheese, coffee, 2 chocolate biscuits
- 2 slices bread, 1/2 carrot, lettuce, 1 egg, mayonaise
- 1 v. small plum (sugar plum), handful grapes, 2 cracker with cottage cheese, gherkin
- 4 squares of chocolate

it's 6.23pm and i just ate the chocolate. My brain is niggling a bit, not as much as it has in the past before a binge - but it is the biggest temptation i have had so far. Have i really not eaten enough for the day???? Is my starvation response still not being hit on the head... *wails*... i can't eat anymore, unless i'm on a binge!!!! damn... i know this is bad of me, but i have to know if i can trust my instincts or not, otherwise i'm going to fall off the rails... i'm going to count up the calories for today...

Ok that was bad of me - but i'm at 5,200 kj - i'm supposed to have 7,600 for my height and weight, to not put on any weight. Which means that even if i didn't want to gain weight, i could still have fish and chips for dinner if i want to... awesome!!... this means that the principles i'm following are true - my body is actually doing a good job at calculating my needs! :) phew... i know that was naughty of me, but i was freaking out! i guess sometimes you just need that bit of validation to check you are doing the right thing.

and look at that - i've waited 15 minutes since i started this post and the niggling thoughts have gone... so the distraction technique does seem to work!

I guess, though, i do have to learn that if i'm still under in KJ today, not including allowances for my 30 minutes of incidental exercise, AND i ate more today than i usually do - then i'm probably not actually eating enough to maintain my weight, or stabilise it, which is going to make my job at losing weight all that much harder. This must be why it's taking me at least a month to feel the indication that i'm free to start dieting again... i.e. that morning when you wake up and have the motivation to run, dance, jump, and start that diet again - and watch your weight drop like someone who's never tried to lose weight before.

Well, bottoms up - Here's to eating more tomorrow!

Progress: from "Yikes!" to "Yum!"

I remember a few nights ago I asked mum what she was making for dinner. Turns out it was lamb roast, but do you know what was awesome that happened next? Rather than thinking "oh goodness, this is the end, i'm going to blow my diet" i thought "oooh yum". Whilst that may sound like a strange thing to be excited about, let me explain a bit about me in the past: when i was on diets, i used to freak out about the prospect of eating something greasy, even if it was just lamb roast - anything that wasn't 'low kilojoule' used to scare me like nothing on earth, because i didn't want to break my diet and i believe that eating it would make me. On the opposite end, when i wasn't on a diet and was in my 'eat everything in sight' mode because 'i don't care anymore', i still wouldn't have got excited about lamb roast. Because eating held no pleasure for me (despite doing plenty of it) and frankly i'd already eaten everything else in the world already so i didn't really care about what i was eating next, or what it tasted like.

How strange to be on such huge extremes!

Another "Yikes to Yum" moment has happened recently. Mum couldn't get skim milk from the shops - so i had to use full fat for my coffee and for my cereal, and i just went "meh" and happily used it without a second thought. Usually that would be a flip out moment and i would just not have cereal, or not have coffee - or eat the cereal dry! - and then freak out that i couldn't have my coffee (despite loving drinking coffee, i've unfortunately long considered it a 'diet food' when done using skim milk) which kept me going through the day (replacing blood sugar with caffeine is never a good idea! No wonder i had anxiety issues...). Hehe, i had two chocolate chip bikkies this morning with my coffee... full fat of course... the idea of low fat biscuits astounds me - better to have the fat since that will keep you full for longer and help you eat less of them ( i used to hear that and think - yeah, but that only works if you don't just end up eating lots of the full fat biscuits. but oddly enough i've very easily stopped at two...).

I think that despite considering myself on maintenance, i'm still not actually eating enough!!! I had breakfast at 9.45 this morning (a generous bowl of homemade muesli, a pear and fullfat milk) - then at 11 am i was really hungry again, and had to eat some cheese with vitabite crackers (farmland rock salt vitabite crackers are possibly the most delicious thing i have ever eaten...!) to get rid of it before i did something stupid. And then i had my coffee and two bikkies, so i'm feeling very nicely content right now... :) but anyway - another thing that's making me realise i may not be eating enough was the fact that (sorry, i couldn't resist weighing myself again today! But it has been a week... it was just after having those few not-so-healthy days that i got paranoid!) when i weighed myself i was actually a little bit below 70 kilograms. To be totally honest, when you go on 'maintenance' mode to stabilise your weight, you will tend to put on a little bit of weight (maybe 500g max) - but that is mainly because when you lose weight, you lose a lot of fluid and glycogen from your muscles. When you eat enough again, then your body has the ability to replenish those glycogen stores (which is a good thing, because that means that you get your energy to move again!). But anyway - what that basically means is that i've probably continued to lose weight. Which is a good thing, but also a bad thing as i don't want to encounter another famine reaction quickly when i try to lose that next 5 kilograms! But i guess it's still nice that i'm managing to eat a lot of what i want and still lose weight... and i know i still have plenty of energy in my muscles as last night i had plenty of energy to run for 15 minutes on the treadmill (please don't make the mistake of thinking i'm uber fit or do a lot of exercise - that was a huge achievement for me, and it was reasonably easy! Every day i make sure i do 30 minutes of incidental exercise - and on days where i want to and have the energy to, i go for a walk/pilates/treadmill - which is usually only 2 days a week for about half an hour too!), and i'm writing a report at the moment for my thesis - so i spend the entire day sitting on my tuff in my chair!

I think i'll know if i'm still having a famine reaction if i'm very hungry in another 2 hours, because i know from my past calorie-counting habits and from my medical knowledge of fat, protein and fibre metabolism, that what i just ate should technically keep me full for a few hours at least. If i am - then i guess i need to eat more... but i don't know if i can do that!!! I'm already eating everything i want... How strange does that sound, that i'm actually having to force myself to eat more in order to lose weight??

Love Nikki

PM Update: was hungry at 2pm, and had a huge sandwich. I ate the sandwich and was about to finish off on a carrot in the salad. I got halfway and found i just couldn't eat anymore. i feel satisfied now, though a little more satisfied than i'm comfortable with. Mental note for a great sandwich: toast 2 slices of thick multigrain or rye bread and then rub with garlic, spread mayonnaise lightly on either side of bread. Add grated carrot on one side, lettuce on the other, and place a fried egg (i dry fry in non-stick pan) upside down on carrot so that the yolk runs into the carrot. Sprinkle with salt and a few slices of onion. Squish together, mopping up the yummy molten yolk on the plate with dry bits of bread... FANTASTIC!

Lesson of the day: Be honest with yourself

Hi all - bit of an update.

I broke up with a long term boyfriend last last monday - so i had expected that this would have been a time for me to get depressed and eat lots and get fat. But actually, since my decision a few months ago - it was a lot easier to continue eating normally, and go out and see friends (almost every night this week, for the last 2 weeks!)

Well i went out again last night. Had pizza AGAIN. And my old dieting nerves started to jitter a bit - the ones that say, you shouldn't do it, you shouldn't do it, you shouldn't do it. But I was quite hungry, so that made me feel better, and i ate two small pieces and felt stuffed. and then couldn't think about food again for the rest of the night and was happily sprawled on the floor (at a friend's house!) having shits and giggles with my uni mates.

Anyway, i woke up this morning feeling a bit strange. I can't describe it - but i think i'm feeling a slight paranoia about the whole: "eating when you are hungry, and stopping when you are full thing, and exactly what you are craving". BEcause whilst i've been doing that, compared to my normal eating habits - the foods haven't been that healthy. I mean, sure enough - none of the pizza's i've eaten were domino's (they were all home made - but the ones last night weren't dressed with tomato paste, but a delicious olive oil/chilli/salt blend, so oilier than i'm used to). And i guess i have't gorged on chocolate or chips or biscuits or anything of the sort (i've eaten them, but never wanted more than a few bits - really really bizarre for me... very very proud :) ). I guess i'm still getting paranoid about eating too highly processed foods in case that won't help tell my body to get out of starvation mode and make me still pile on the pounds. Maybe it's just because i don't feel like I've had enough vegetables over the last bit... but i guess we can only find out how this works with time - if i've gone over 70 kilograms by next week, then obviously i went a bit overboard on the processed food. But in all honesty, when i look at what i've eaten - i think i'll be okay.

SIgh i feel so relieved having said all that - writing it down makes it look so much more logical.

oooh! PS: I just was craving chocolate, and i broke off some for mum and i. I was going to only have 2 squares - but then i thought, nah i actually do want more than that - so i took four. We put the chocolate away, and i walked away. By the time i got to my room, it was obviously gone. But in all frank and open honesty... i didn't want more! I knew if i had only had two - that that wouldn't have satisfied me. But four squares isn't much more - and i was entirely honest with myself, and knew that giving myself those two bits extra that would make me forget about it, rather than going down in 20 minutes and eating the block. Now THAT is how to stop a chocolate binge before it comes in. :)

take care all,

Love Nikki

Day One: About Me

Well, it's not really day one. About two months ago was when i made the choice to say goodbye to binge eating and took a leap of faith. I knew i was binge eating because i wasn't eating enough on a regular basis, but taking that step of eating more when all i wanted to do was diet - was the hardest thing i have ever done.

Two months in, and a collegue says: "hey, have you lost weight?"
Sure enough when i got home i weighed myself and i had lost 5 kilograms! The ravenous uncontrollable hunger was gone, and i was feeling good. I had achieved this all by eating what i wanted, when i wanted it, and stopping when i was full.

AFter that 5 kilograms - i was keen for more, so i lost another 5 kilograms by starting another diet again. But because i had had that break before, the ravenous hunger didn't set in - at least not until recently.

So about 2 weeks ago, i took the second most difficult step of my life - i stopped dieting again, and started eating what i want again. At first it was hard, and i found i was still restricting - but recently i've been eating things i would have called "unhealthy": roast lamb, grilled bacon and poached eggs, toast with honey - etc etc etc - all things that i ignored when on a diet because i was afraid my weight would balloon.

It's been two weeks, and I'm still on 70 kilograms! The hunger is almost gone, but i still think i need more time on weight maintenance before i tackle weight loss again. I'm not ready to lose weight again just yet! Well, mentally i am - but physically i know my body needs time. And i'm strong in this resolve because i know that by doing this, i'm reducing the chance of ever going over 70 kilograms again!

Well, wish me luck, and wish me strength!

As always - if you have an questions about how to achieve this, feel free to comment or send me an email. I'm passionately devoted to helping anyone achieve a healthy relationship with food again, and avoid those starvation/binge periods that are destroying your body.

Love Nikki