Pounding the Numbers

The joy of losing weight is seeing the number go down on the scales. Once you approach your goal, this happens much more slowly and there are ups and downs along the way.

When you deliberately gain weight each week by carb re-feeding, a wonderful thing happens. Every day the scales drop. Well, that's not exactly true, the first day they go up an astonishing unbelievable amount, but I have been skipping the Sunday morning weigh in so I don't spiral into complete depression.

So Monday morning I stand on the scales and brace myself for a 1-2 or even 3 kilo gain -- ouch! But then the fun part starts. Every night when I get home from work I weigh myself and I am the same weight as that morning, which of course means a loss will show up the next morning.

I have put my scales on the pounds setting because I get to see the numbers go down even quicker -- half a pound is much more satisfying than 250 grams! And because I have a stupid mathematical blockage in my brain, I don't even really know how these new numbers translate into kilograms. I am probably (definitely) higher than I would prefer but these 130 something numbers don't have any reference point for me, they are just numbers.

So since Monday I have gone from 140.1 lbs to 138.7 lbs this morning averaging about 1/2 a pound a day. Now I am not back to pre-refeed weight [137.2] and it's Thursday so there will be no net loss this week, but at least it is some kind of bizarre maintenance scheme.

So we have already established that my re-feed is too generous and this week I am just going to have double cheese crusted bbq chicken pizza and maybe some donuts for desert on Saturday night and delay the insulin roller coaster ride until after I've eaten a normal breakfast and lunch. So if the weight spike is lower, I could start losing actual fat again instead of spending the week peeing out the water sucked up by the carbs. Of course, there is always that chance that the smaller the re-feed the slower the following weight drop will be, but as long as I only see a gain once a week, I will be happy.

I am also thinking that I need something to tide me over the 4pm hunger crash I get every afternoon. I know that not eating between noon and 7pm is too long but I can't find a low carb snack that interests me in the afternoons -- 25 almonds don't seem worth the effort. And I hate drinking protein shakes.

So if any of you have a low calorie low-carb home made protein bar recipe that preferably doesn't need baking -- just mix up the ingredients and set in the fridge -- I would like to try it. I'm not good with wheat or soy but an oats and protein powder mix might do it. Thanks :)