[niafabo]

Well I'll admit I completely fell of the bandwagon this holiday season but the results were quite surprising. I stopped counting calories around Thanksgiving but I kept up exercising and I kept losing weight at a slow but steady pace right into the second week of December.

During that week I horribly injured my back and found myself in crippling pain. Pain radiated horribly down my leg and I could barely move and when I did I was met with pain that was so bad I broke into a horrible sweat and nearly lost conciousness. I was told it could be a slipped disk and I had to get it checked out. My leg was in constant pain because I had a pinched nerve but thankfully they found out I just tore something. For two weeks I stopped doing anything diet related. Depressed I pigged out on food while I laid around and iced my back. I am still not sure how but during that time I never gained weight. Slowly but surely I recovered until last Monday I started to really exercise again.

Within three days of getting moving again I lost two pounds. Excited I started eating right again. Right away another pound fell off. Now five days back into eating well again I awoke to see that I was another two pounds lighter. When I was completely on plan I was lucky to lose 1-2 pounds a week but in the last week or so I've lost 5 pounds. I haven't had results like this since I first started exercising in June. Any ideas on why I'm losing so fast?

[j0lamo01]

The reason is because you have been excersing even though you took a break, by excersing your metabalism has gotten better. As long as you get back on your diet and excersise again you will be fine

[kittycarlson]

You are so lucky not to gain. I fell off the wagon a little before Christmas until New Years. I did have a few good days in there where I was trying to get back on track. Anyway I gained about five LBS probably mostly water because when I got back on plan I lost all five LBS in less that a week. Now that I have rebooted I have been on plan for eight consecutive days and feel in control again.

[Eurydice]

Typically, when we go from pigging out on whatever we want to eating on a certain plan, that plan includes a lot less sodium than the whatever-diet. You've probably lost a lot of the water weight that you were retaining those weeks when you were eating more sodium.

[Eliana]

I am in the process of doing this on purpose. Over the holidays I took a break from exercise and calorie counting, within reason. I had been on a plateau since the beginning of October at 158. My mini hiatus broke my plateau after a slight gain. It's been amazing! My workouts are better, my energy is doubled and my enthusiasm for my plan is increased. It IS like starting over again, only better.

I highly recommend taking routine PLANNED breaks within reason. I'm going to start doing this routinely every 12 weeks. A break for me means no exercise for 1-2 weeks. I tried 2 weeks but just couldn't stand it any longer so I ended up back at the gym after just over a week. I think a week is probably plenty of time, but I hadn't had a break in year. For calories I am starting to cycle higher calorie days with lower calorie days. There is a very precise schedule for calorie cycling, but I am doing it intuitively. Most of my days tend to be low calorie based on how I feel, but then there are days I am just ravenous, so I'm giving in to that.

Good luck, and congratulations with getting right back on plan! That's the only problem with what I'm doing right now. Sometimes people find it's too hard to get back on. It's easier to stay the course.

[niafabo]

Thanks for the advice guys. Very interesting concept Eliana. It is hard to get back into the swing of things but I feel the same way about the extra energy and enthusiasm.