Last week I had so much going on with the end of the semester for both my classroom and grad school, that I had to just grab and go for a week. I wasn't able to prepare meals, and had to just kind of eat as an afterthought. I did this for seven days, and I was relieved to start tracking and eating pre-prepared meals again.
Within three days, I started reaching for the sweets first to fill me up, even if I had a lunch in the faculty lounge. I would start my lunch by eating four cookies, then sneak four for later, for example, and skip most of my lunch. It didn't help that my lunch was just some nasty canned chicken with ranch dip.
I had a victory in that one day I was really hungry because my breakfast and lunch weren't satisfying. I also had a school incident that made me very upset, AND we had a holiday party, where I had two beers. On the way from the holiday party to grad school, I really just wanted to stop at McDonald's and get my old stand-by, a #2 with a chocolate shake. I knuckled through it and got a salad from the school cafeteria instead.
My body started feeling gross. After six days of eating tons of sugar and candy and total crap in general (like a huge chunk of cheese for a meal and Rolos) I felt yucky and heavy feeling, like low-energy. I had a non-scale victory--wearing some shirts and a dress that were too small for me before--but because I felt all icky and bloated, I didn't enjoy wearing the dress as much as I wanted to. As soon as I prepared some meals and ate some actual vegetables, my body felt more light and I had more energy.
Without tracking, I didn't have information to help me pace my day. I also wasn't able to see days when I was successful. I guess I learned that tracking isn't just to keep me accountable and get me eating correct portions, it's also to help me see my successes. I am usually hard on myself about things, so having numbers in front of me forces me to give myself a pat on the back and feel proud when I do things right.
I am the most proud that I knew during the week that this was just a one week thing. I planned the day I could start tracking and planning again and looked forward to it. I also wasn't too hard on myself about not doing great on my diet, because I knew grad school had to be my top priority during finals week. That is totally different from how things might have gone in the past when I was losing weight! I might have just given up on my diet totally and abandoned ship! I feel really happy because I know I have made a life-time commitment to proper eating and being healthy this time around, and this week helped me to think about some things from the other side of the fence. The grass is not greener!
On thing I would change for the next time this happens, is to suck it up and get some soups or some frozen dinners that are generally healthy and you can just open, warm-up and eat. It isn't what I like to eat usually, but I think it would have been better than just being hungry and stuffing my face with whatever I could get my hands on. Plus it would have taken the fast food temptations away.
I know I couldn't have gotten to this point mentally without this website, so thank you to every one who is on here! This forum has really changed the way I think about eating and losing weight. I am really excited to keep going and see what happens.
Dancing carrots for being back and feeling confident in the long-term results I WILL see!
Thoughts on a Week Off
