The recovery continues, but how...?

This week has been a bit of a mixed bag so far. I was really pleased with Saturday. Getting through a Saturday on under 3000 calories was massive for me. Saturdays are usually my highest calorie day thanks to huge amounts of snacking and lots of wine and beer, so I should have been set up well for the week.

The curse of the macaroon

 

Sunday, well, it really wouldn't have been that bad; but then came mum's baking.

We went 'round to say hello and have a quick afternoon tea, and she'd been baking. In particular, she'd been baking her amazingly fantastic macaroons, spectacularly light and tasty; half-dipped in chocolate. Superb.

Now, my brother was there and, currently dieting himself, had been through the ingredients and worked out that there were only about 90 calories in each one. Amazing. Unfortunately, if you eat more than a dozen, all those 90s add up. Throw in a few wee bite-size muffins, and you're up to a real number.

Other than that, the rest of the day was okay and, even including the baking binge, the weekend's total left the daily budget for the rest of the week looking quite achievable to hit a daily average of 2300 calories.

All to play for.

Where has the weight gone?

 

A good question.

If you look at the graph, you can see that I've lost about the same amount of weight in a week and a bit or so, as I did in the first two months of the diet. How can that have happened?

Well, the first thing is that the night before that fateful 'weigh-in of huge weight-gain', I had three very large bottles of Corona, so I was probably very nicely hydrated for the next morning, so that first weight was perhaps not a fair representation of what I actually weighed.

Add to that the fact that I was probably more stuffed with glycogen than I had been for a while and you might get another pound or two. Hell, maybe even three if you're feeling generous. Still, I wouldn't have expected to lose that much weight.

Homeostasis and marginal gains

 

The body is pretty good and maintaining equilibrium; certainly, it has processes that work hard to try to maintain equilibrium. This is a fairly large topic by itself, and one that will get its own post at some point, but let's just say "adaptive thermogenesis". Basically, the body tries to regulate its energy reserves by altering that whole ATP Synthase efficiency thing and changing the amount of heat you produce.

In an overly-simplified nutshell, if you eat lots and lots and lots, your body becomes less efficient and you burn more calories as heat, if you eat less and less and your fat stores get depleted, you get more efficient and fewer of those protons are wasted spinning those enzymes without making ATP and you don't generate as much heat, saving those calories you ate for chemical energy.

Could my binging have increased my levels of uncoupling proteins and made me highly inefficient, making it easier to get through those calories when I went back to restricting them again?

Without having done any gene or protein expression analysis, I don't know. What I do know, is that I ate lots of calories and I put on weight, I ate fewer calories - fewer than I should have used in the day - and I started to lose it again.

And that's good enough for me.

There have been a couple of other little changes as well. For one, I stopped having milk in my morning coffees. Switching to Nescafe Azera, which is quite a tasty brew for an instant coffee, has meant I can have my morning instant black. Not something I've been able to do with instant coffees before.

Yes, I should just get the cafetiere out, but I just can't be bothered on a school day. Sure, that saves maybe 100-150 calories a day, but scale that up to ten days, that's getting up for 1500 calories saved - not far off half a pound's worth.

I've also been counting my steps recently - another post in itself to follow later. Now, I'm not expecting this to make a huge difference to things, but - combined with my self-competitive nature, it will have made some.

Yesterday, I found myself running on the spot while I made my breakfast, just to get the steps up. I did it properly as well, I could feel the heart rate go up. When I got to the bus stop, I looked at the next bus due display and saw I had five minutes before my bus was due. Rather than stand there I walked on to the next stop. Then past it and on to the next again one.

By the time I sat down on the bus to go to work, I was already at 4000 steps. Not too bad. I did the same in the evening as well.

Hopefully over the course of the scale of weeks, all these little details will start to make a difference. The issue with this week is that, as it is going so well, there's always that temptation to say you've achieved what you wanted to for the week and write off a couple of days.

Let's try not to to that this time, I'll just enjoy myself properly on Saturday.

Day 80 - 2600 calories

Breakfast
Toast (100)
Bacon sandwich (300)
Mr Kipling Almond Slices (900)

Lunch
3x ham sandwich (400)
Chorizo (250)

Dinner
Salmon (450)
Wine (200)

Exercise
50m walking

Day 81 - 5150 calories

You know what I said above about achieving a goal so writing days off? Well, just yeah...

Breakfast
Toast (100)
5x cookies (1100)

Lunch
3x ham sandwiches (400)
Little cupcake (200)

Dinner
Toast (300)
Bottle of wine (700)
Bacon sandwich (250)
2x Bounty sandwiches (750)
4x cereal bars (600)
3 portions of Weetabix with milk and raisins (750)

Exercise
75m walking

Day 82 - 7200 calories
(It's okay, this is part of an experiment for a future post...)

Breakfast
Diluted fruit juice (50)
Almond croissant (350)
2x Jaffa cake bar (200)

Lunch
Scrambled eggs on toast (300)
Black pudding and lorne sausage (800)
2x Almond croissant (700)

Dinner
4x fruit scone (1100)
Turkey tacos (800)
Ice cream (400)
Cheesecake (400)
Toblerone triangle (100)
Wine (200)
Peanuts (300)
5x 710ml bottles Corona (1500)

Exercise
60m walking

Day 83 - 2900 calories

Breakfast
Milk (100)
Toblerone Alp (100)

Lunch
Ham sandwich (150)
Peanuts (800)
Toast (250)
Cheese (50)
Cake (300)

Dinner
Chicken pie (550)
Wine (300)
Jaffa cake bar (300)

Exercise
45m walking