Never Give Up, Never Surrender

"HEY! Don't open that! It's an alien planet! Is there air? You don't know!"

So I was having my follow up for my Medical Thing, which appears to be ok for now kenahora, and there was a scale involved, and my doctor let me know that I gained 9 pounds since last fall. This is not a shock because I do get on the scale. In some ways it was a relief to have someone come out and say it. I have had periods of being hungrier than usual-- I've done plenty of navel gazing on the subject, and I know what my normal hungry is-- as if my body viewed gaining weight as an important strategic objective. So, objective achieved.

(Let me just say about my doctor that he is an extremely sharp and lovely person. I didn't feel shamed, just, "Hm, what does this mean?")

My motivation to Do Something just went up.  I have been uneasy in other ways-- the pants that always needed a pin to stay up don't need a pin, I am finding candy wrappers in my car (yes, I know I put them there).  I am feeling some shame and frustration which are two emotions I try to limit as much as possible. I’ve been getting up early a few days a week to exercise, and occasionally fitting in a short but grueling steep hike, but more is needed.

My chosen method to Do Something, as detailed in exhaustive reasons contained in the previous 40,000 pages of this blog, would be

1. dead simple

2. gently limiting while still allowing the occasional slice of homemade apple pie with all butter crust
3. not weird, rigid, or time consuming

The problem with these gently limiting techniques is that weight loss is slow, and if you loosen your grip or slip up, you don't lose at all. (See August 2016). I know I was telling myself, Well, I can just eat what I want whenever if I'm not going to lose any weight. If you're a set point theory person there is some truth in that, but apparently my body no longer subscribes to set point theory, so we're going to adopt a new theory, which is...

Trying to build up the suspense here...

No Sweets, No Snacks, No Seconds. (Yes, it's a book and a website:)  The author, Reinhard Engels, is a really entertaining writer and he makes a lot of sense to me. I don't think he has delved fully into the dark waters of insulin resistance and regulation (which would probably do more to support than undermine this system), but I can obsess over that on my own.

A similar system is Eat Like a Normal Person which I ran into on Pinterest.

None of this is new. The nutritionist Jane Brody used a similar method to lose 35 pounds back when oxygen was forming. I have tried it myself at times-- used it successfully in college to get down to 129 1/2 and was definitely All That for a while there. French people eat this way, or they did in 1984 when I spent six weeks there,

I worry about a couple of things-- the difficulty of making it through from breakfast until lunch, and the difficulty of not eating when I get home from work at 3.  Eating enough at meals and hopefully training my body to release insulin at certain times and not others (if it will agree to be trained) will help. I worry that I may not lose weight on it and will get discouraged and quit.  But one small advantage to being Quite Fat is that I suspect I have a good shot of losing at least some weight by cutting out snacks.

So here we go.  I started yesterday at lunch.  I thought it would be murder to get through until dinner but it was really okay. Likewise this morning. I have exciting leftover chicken marsala from Carraba's for lunch and I plan to make something lovely and special on the weekend which is tomorrow. So, week 1.

Note to future self: rapid weight loss not expected. Hang in there.