As of today, I am officially 9 days away from Maintenance. Nine days. Hot damn.
I remember, when I started this thing, thinking that I could hack a month's worth of drops and diet and restriction, no problem. It'd be a piece of cake, and I'd breeze through the days like they were hours instead of days. The food, once I'd read the portion sizes and actually started measuring them out, seemed like a ton, and cooking was a breeze once you had all the prep work done.
Half way through the protocol, I got bogged down. Exhaustion from life set in, and trying to find both the energy and creativity needed to feed both myself and BF was difficult. I grew frustrated (clearly) with the restrictions, and while the food portion sizes hadn't changed, my perception of their flexibility had. I was no longer confident in the protocol, or my ability to complete it.
Today, I find myself in a curious blend of the two extremes. I'm neither deliriously happy with the program, nor extremely distrustful and dissatisfied with it. I'm...comfortable with it. Yes, you have to go on a restrictive diet for a few weeks. Yes, it makes having a life outside of the living room and your laptop awkward. Yes, it's more than a month long commitment to better health.
Yes, the food is sufficient to feel full. Yes, there is variety in what you eat, how you eat, when you eat. Yes, you can make it through a 26 day program and survive, lol. Yes, you do have much more freedom on the Maintenance phases than you did in the VLCD phase. And YES, you do lose weight. I woke up this morning, to a 0.8 lb loss. After yesterday's gain, that really only means a 0.2lb loss, but it's a loss all the same.
Life, in general, is a constant learning curve of what and how we react to the stimuli we run across in our constant bid for learning, aspiring, growing as human beings. If I'm comfortable being a size 12-14, then I should have just stayed where I was at. If I'm comfortable being a size 6-8, then I need to make the sacrifices to get back to that weight, and then make the proper choices to maintain that life style. It can't be all about indulgence, all the damn time. Sadly :(
I'm finding that as I creep closer to my LDW - Last Drop Weight - that I'm getting hungrier and hungrier throughout the day. I'm hoping it's a sign that I'm getting close to the weight I was two years ago, which is when I gained the most. I'm pretty certain that's one of my plateau weights. I'll be prepping over the next week for Maintenance, and I'm looking forward to working out now that I've already begun the process of getting back to those size 6-8 jeans.
If there's one thing I could stress to a new protocol member, it'd be this: Be prepared. The food guide can be a bit overwhelming when you first look at it, and you start planning meals and buying food based off what sounds good, instead of what's good by the numbers. Pick three (minimum) from each food group, so that they fall into the following categories:
Low Calorie
Medium Calorie
High Calorie
Why, you ask, is this a good idea? Your body's going to crave different types of protein on different days. Let's say you go with ground beef, cabbage, apple, and melba for lunch. That's 301 calories in that one meal. In order to stay under the 500 calorie mark, you've got to eat a protein, veggie, and fruit that are extremely low in calories. My go to meal for this instance would be chicken, lettuce, and half a grapefruit: 179 calories. All combined, I'm looking at 480 calories. There's room to move now, with a piece of melba later if I get snackish. Problem solved.
So, definitely, keep a variety of the groups on hand, and make sure you shop for at least one in each of the low, medium, and high calorie sets. It'll make cooking much easier. I ended up relying on ground beef, chicken, and shrimp, for the protein; lettuce, cabbage, asparagus for the veggie, with some fennel, onion, and spinach thrown in for a change; and apples, oranges, and grapefruit for the fruit. I added beef broth for a little comfort when necessary, and tons of Frank's Red Hot Sauce, mustard, and black pepper. It got repetitive, but at least it tasted good ^_^
I'm still a week away from finishing the drops, so I'm sure I'll have more up and down days between now and then. For now, though, I'm pretty content. I'm almost done, I'm down 15 lbs, I have a desire and drive to work out to lose the rest, and I'm working on the mental changes required to keep going at it. Not bad, for 17 days.
No comments:
Post a Comment