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!