After a weekend involving over 1500cal of alcohol, I decided to cut my calories lower for a few days to attempt to rescue the week. I normally eat about 1300cal on weekdays, but by chosing low cal options for all my meals, I was down to 1135 cal on Monday, and 998cal on Tuesday.
And now I am starving! Absolute, mind-numbing, urgent hunger. I skipped the gym to go home and eat dinner, as I was afraid if I left it any longer I would eat everything in sight.
So, I'm not going to do that again. I made sure I ate at least 1300 today. Hopefully that will be enough, because my shirt was looking pretty tasty earlier today.
Sorry to hear it had such a bad effect, but congrats for plowing through it and not eating "everything in sight."
Going back up today sounds like a really good plan.
I always figure, even though we might have a little more food or some alcohol one day, as long as we don't do it everyday our bodies should be able to deal with it without causing too much damage on the scale. After all, I think for most of us the issue was doing those kinds of things everyday, rather than once in a while.
I have been suddenly maddeningly hungry at the end of the day lately and I wonder if your good advice might hold the key. Thanks for an informative post and good work both as a nutritional dectective!
Ok, much better today Thanks everyone for the sympathy - it was not fun. I am pleased that I didn't give in - I kept telling myself that it was the ghrelin (hunger hormone) talking, not real hunger, and that it would all be ok tomorrow. Luckily, it looks like it is.
I never understood how anyone can go under 1200 calories anyway. If I eat the right things I'm just satisfied at 1200 calories, but if I tried to get by on lower I would be very sad. Some days I feel like I'm starving at 1500 calories...so a 900 day or even an 1100 day sounds awful to me. :-)
Well, I wouldn't recommend it obviously, but the way I plan my food it wasn't too hard logistically. I eat two 200cal snacks, at morning tea and afternoon tea, generally a piece of fruit and a muesli bar or some nuts, which I often drop to 100cal if I go out for lunch, or go off plan some otherway. So I dropped both snacks to 100cal and ate on plan for the rest of the day. The 1000 day I had a subway salad for dinner, which was only 200cal - fairly lacking in taste too, sadly.
Why you DON'T go under 1200cal
Thanks everyone for the sympathy - it was not fun. I am pleased that I didn't give in - I kept telling myself that it was the ghrelin (hunger hormone) talking, not real hunger, and that it would all be ok tomorrow. Luckily, it looks like it is.
