Last week, I did six days in a row of a more restricted food plan. Not only did I not have any white flour products, white potato, rice, pasta or anything with refined sugar, I also cut out milk, yogurt, beans, legumes, nuts, fruit and a number of vegetables.
I still ate delicious food and did not feel in the least like I was starving. It’s just a good solid high protein/low carb plan that boosts my metabolism and weight loss.
I planned for six days and that’s what I adhered to. Yesterday, I knew I had two social functions. I didn’t want to go wildly off plan, but I wanted to have a little more flexibility. The plan was to take yesterday and today off from the restricted plan and then get back to it tomorrow through Friday.
I was pretty proud of how I handled the day yesterday and the functions I attended. I did have a small piece of brownie at lunch and a chocolate chip cookie at night but I had also worked out and made very good food choices for all the other meals. I felt like I was still in a balanced plan for a “cheat day”.
Today started off with an hour bike ride followed by a good protein-specific breakfast. I was on plan for the day. I did my supermarket shopping for things that would fit my restricted food plan this week and I even prepared for a business trip that’s coming up. I got some cheese product that doesn’t need refrigeration and some jerky sticks that I can take with me as 911 foods.
Tonight’s dinner was from my Plated.com subscription. Barbeque turkey meatloaf with roasted broccoli and mashed sweet potato. I made adjustments in the recipe such as using less of the barbeque sauce because I know it had sugar or molasses in it. The mashed potato recipe called for adding maple syrup. I like sweet potatoes without lots of stuff added so I opted to bake mine instead and then only ate half of it. (I treated Natty to the other half.)
But here’s my beef with myself. I am wondering if there will ever come a time when mentally it will be okay with me to eat certain things and not feel like I’m cheating.
There really isn’t anything wrong with having half of a sweet potato, for crying out loud. To be 100% honest, there isn’t anything wrong with occasionally having sweets like a small piece of brownie and a cookie. It isn’t like I gobbled down an entire pan or binged on a bag. (In the interest of full disclosure, in my old out-of-control binge days, I would eat an entire bag of cookies or two in a single evening.)
So, despite the fact that I ate perfectly acceptable quantities of food with a good balance of protein and produce; even though I ate sweets in small portion; I feel like I failed.
Sweet Lord I am hard on myself. At least I recognize it. The issue for me tonight is getting the scold out of my head. I keep thinking that I failed and that tomorrow morning on the scale I will have gained back the pounds that I lost last week.
I try to tell myself that this is the weird FEAR acronym of False Evidence Appearing Real. I want to believe that I did not trash a week of effort with one mild “cheat day”. Then I start thinking that as a WLS patient with an eating disorder, maybe I’m in denial or fooling myself to think that a cheat day is very okay.
Right now, I don’t have any good answers, only diseased thoughts. To deal with them, I’ve closed the kitchen for the rest of the days which means nothing more to eat. I have my meals for tomorrow planned and the foods I need for a snack and lunch at work are ready to be packed.
I’m leaving my weighing options open. I may elect to not weigh myself tomorrow morning but to wait for Tuesday morning, which is the regular weekly weigh-in day for my group. Perhaps by having a solid day tomorrow I can resolve some of the negative thoughts and worries that I’m experiencing tonight. We shall see! I’m hopeful.
Weighty Matters 
I’ve been following your journey for over a year now, and just wanted to step up and let you know that your words help more than yourself. I managed to lose fifty pounds with Weight Watchers, but about fifteen of them have come back. I’m using your insights along with my WW meetings to stop the backwards progress and get back to losing.
Thank you,
Kim M/Ginger Betty
Thanks for reading and for sharing. Believe in yourself and you can get back moving in the right direction. Good luck.