167.5

Okay, so maybe it was a stomach flu.  I ended up being sick that entire day.  Not fun.

I am still stuck at the magic number I was stuck at for most of last year despite my attempts at both dieting and exercising some pounds off.  167.5 is where my body wants to stay!  I even had 3 pounds of breast tissue removed and somehow, my body retained or else quickly replaced those 3 pounds after my surgery.  This would actually be a fascinating phenomenon to me if it wasn't utterly frustrating!

I have noticed that since being unwired, I have only within the last couple days begun to feel a desire to eat both MORE than I need (ie: eat when I'm not hungry) and MORE CARBS (ie: my body wants to increase its fat stores). It prompts me to wonder why... Is it because I'm at the beginning of my PMS cycle?...  Or maybe it's because it's finally gotten to feel like winter outside (cold weather maybe makes you burn more calories to stay warm, so your appetite increases?)...  Or maybe it's because I'm once again at that point where my body wants to stay (167.5), so it's going to guard against me going below that set point... It's so interesting to consider all the possible reasons - it may be all 3 or none of them.  I'll never fully understand what's going on inside my body, but I am determined to find a way of eating that is sustainable for my lifetime and that gets me leaner than I currently am. But am I fighting against my very nature?

I just read a major portion of "Good Calories, Bad Calories" lately, and the part of the book I read talks a lot about how each of our bodies tend to prefer a certain body composition - that's why some of us will always be able to eat mass quantities and still be wiry and thin, while others of us will eat far less than those thin people and (unfairly!) retain pudge.  If you are anything like me (ie: if you are having trouble understanding WHY you a.) can't stick to a diet, or b.) seem stuck at a certain weight) I strongly recommend picking up and reading "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes.  The middle chapters in particular have really helped me understand what's going on in my body, and that the idiotic "calories in, calories out" approach to weight loss is completely unsupported scientifically.  If you've been trying to lose weight on a low calorie "balanced" diet, those chapters in particular specifically address WHY it's not working (or why it might have worked in the beginning, but now your weight loss has tapered off and the only way you see around it is to reduce your caloric intake even lower than you had it).  

Do yourself a favor and read that book - not because it advocates a diet similar to the one I try to stick to, but simply for the sheer volume of diet and nutrition "laws" that it debunks by way of ACTUAL SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS.  It is truly sickening to me that unsupported nutritional science has become mainstream and is even defended by most of the medical community.  Who can we listen to if our own doctors are gobbling up the shoddy analysis and research of biased scientists - scientists who seem biased not only by their desire to prove their own hypotheses correct, but also by their desire to give their funders (those organizations who pay them to come to their often limp and illogical conclusions) the trial outcomes they are hoping (paying?) for?

Read, learn, educate yourself.

5:00AM and miserable

It has been exactly 2 weeks since my surgery, and the healing is well under way.  A lot of the swelling is gone and for the most part the stitched areas are closed and healing properly.  The doctor said he removed a little over 3 pounds of breast tissue (so imagine having 4 twelve-ounce cans of soda suddenly gone from the front of you) - yet here I sit miserably uncomfortable at 5 o'clock in the morning.  

Why, you ask?  It has nothing to do with my surgery (though learning to sleep on my back has been somewhat difficult).  It's all because I "splurged" for dinner last night and ordered something I haven't eaten in months that apparently my body did NOT miss - a pepperoni stromboli.  I used to eat these things fairly often - it's the equivalent of a slice of pizza... or more like 4 pieces of pizza rolled up with cheese and pepperoni inside.  I didn't even eat the whole thing, which would have been no problem for me before I started to cut way down on grains, but I guess abstaining from that kind of food really WAS a good thing for me.  I mean, I feel AWFUL right now.  Bloated, nauseated, sweating, even a little dizzy.  I hope and pray my stomach takes matters into its own hands soon and decides to forcibly eject its contents because clearly I am incapable of digesting this horrific blob of evil I "treated" myself to at 6pm yesterday evening.

So... could this mean that what I've been reading is true... that some people really can be allergic and addicted to certain foods like wheat or dairy products?  Whenever I've told people that, most of them look at me as though I'm just some nutty conspiracy theorist grasping at straws to explain away my weight problem.  Yet if you read some of these articles, it doesn't sound crazy at all.  In fact, it's something I hope a lot more people like me figure out soon so they can begin their recovery.  Just the fact that I'm sitting here about to...  

...Ah, yes, success.  God, I hate throwing up, but it sure does make you feel better afterward, you know?  Well, no more strombolis for me EVER.  What a strong deterrent, making someone get sick when they eat something they aren't supposed to!  (And I know it wasn't the pepperoni or the cheese that made me sick - I've been eating those for the past 3 weeks on a regular basis with no problems whatsoever.)  This reminds me of a time my brother came home drunk from a party when he was a teenager and he barfed all night long after having had way too much peach schnapps - to this day, 20 years later, even saying the words "peach" and "schnapps" in the same sentence makes him turn green.  

Ug.  Good morning...