I'm a Big, FAT, Idiot (End of Experiment)

Well, my experiment was not as successful as I would have hoped. Honestly, I felt like I had lost 5 pounds. Unfortunately the scale this morning revealed that I had gained a pound! DANG!

The experiment guidelines:

• Eliminate grains and sugars from my diet whenever possible
• Exercise at least 3 times a weeks for a minimum of one hour
• DO NOT weigh myself again until Valentines Day
• DO NOT count calories

In terms of removing sugar and grains, I managed that with no problem (although I missed a few sweets). I felt great the entire time and never once woke up with a sugar hangover. My energy level was up and I never felt like my workouts suffered.

My training continued as planned and I had no problem meeting the 3 weekly one hour workouts. Most of the weeks included about 7-9 hours of training.

• I ran 15 times for a total of 102 miles and burned 9,700 calories
• I rode 11times for a total of 231 miles and burned 6,700 calories
• I also swam 8 times and went to one spin class…there was also my daily walk at work

Here's where I think the problem occurs:

Bad Idea: Not Weighing Myself Regularly

By not weighing myself at least once a week, I was clueless. By not having this one valuable piece of information, I was able to continue without any idea that what I was doing was not giving me the desired affect. 

REALLY Bad Idea: Not Counting Calories

Even without the scale, I think my biggest problem was not counting calories. I'm not a big calorie counter to begin with…whenever I try to write down what I eat, I fail within about 1/2 a day…I hate the extra work required LOL. Regardless, I usually have a pretty good running total in my mind and if I stick to my 5 small meals a day without additional snacking. When I do this, I keep my weight in my desired zone.

Unfortunately, with this experiment, I gave myself free reign to eat whatever I wanted and as much as I wanted as long at it didn't have sugar or grains. That's what "Don't count calories" means, right?

In reality, this meant that I was eating a lot of butter, cheese, meat, and NUTS that were not typically part of my diet.

This is a 5 lb. bag of peanuts that was FULL a few weeks ago

3rd tub of fancy mixed nuts

The pictures above are not reflective of ALL I ate, there was also a BIG bag of pistachios from Costco as well as numerous bags of nuts from Trader Joe's. I cannot believe how stupid and self-destructive this was! What did I think was going to happen by eating all of these high calorie foods without any kind of accounting? DUH!

Besides being high in calories, do you know what a diet of nuts and cheese does to your system? If you think it makes you more regular you are WRONG! In fact, this morning as I was taking my time getting out of bed I had the following conversation with Hot Stuff…

HS:   "Are you waiting to go to the bathroom before you weigh yourself?" 

ME:  "Yes." 

HS:   "Are you going to put that in your blog?"

ME:  "Sure."

(The discussion then turned to the amount of weight "going" could actually account for, but I'll spare you the details of that! LOL)

Well, I waited and waited and waited…heck, it's been over 3 days, what's a few more minutes, right? Eventually, after a big, fat NOTHING, I gave up and weighed myself. I was certain the scale was going to show 144, this would have put me 6 pounds under my starting weight. Unfortunately, the scale read 151, which is up one pound from my starting weight, which at the time was five pounds heavier than my normal weight. 

So, after all this time and effort I had merely hoped to be 1 pound lighter than my normal weight. What a stupid goal…OK, I've got to ease up on myself. My goal wasn't stupid, the way I went about it was! LOL 

Where Do I Go From Here?

Well, my goal is now to get back to my normal 145 and then go from there. This time I will not be eating with uncontrolled abandon. I will begin weighing myself weekly and I will keep sugar and heavily processed foods out of my diet. I will probably add oatmeal, quinoa, and wild rice back in to my diet, but bread remains a no-no.

I will get back to my 5 small meals a day plan and, for the time being, I'm going to skip the nuts and cheese.