Thursday, November 21, 2013

What was I thinking?

Planning to do a second Whole 30 in November wasn't, probably, the wisest decision I've made this year. Then again, when I planned it I didn't know I'd be traveling to a neighboring state to wait for a family friend's brain aneurysm to be surgically repaired!

In fact, I thought this same friend would be coming to visit me for a few days. Instead, she was admitted to the hospital the day before her trip to West Virginia. She's been in ICU ever since, and will be there a couple more days before spending even more time in inpatient rehab.

Her recovery since the initial incident has been remarkable, and no one was more surprised than my husband and I to be able to talk and laugh with her the same night she'd spent hours and hours and hours in surgery. We're so grateful, and so glad we made the trip.

I did okay with food while I was gone. Waiting while a friend goes through life-saving surgery puts things in perspective. The good thing is I didn't cave in to emotional eating. Removing inflammatory foods – and, I think, especially sugar – has brought some sanity to my eating patterns.

No longer do I stand in front of the pantry or refrigerator looking for something, anything to eat. If I'm hungry between meals, I'll have fruit or nuts* or a hard-boiled egg. I'm mostly not hungry unless I haven't eaten for a few hours. (Although I was hungry a lot while I was gone; that could have been an emotional response.)

I remembered to do my bodyweight routine in the hotel, but we only had time for one short walk, on  Tuesday. The scale reflected my lack of exercise this morning, sadly, but since the official weigh day isn't until Monday, I have some time to get back the loss I had last week.

I'm happy where I am. As I've written before, it's kind of hard to keep on keeping on when I feel as good as I do at this weight. However, even knowing the BMI benchmark is flawed, I still want to be at a normal number.

The best way to get there is to follow this advice:
If you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep on getting what you've always got.                                                         ~ W. L. Bateman
*The link is to an NBC piece referencing a Harvard University study suggesting eating nuts can help you live longer. The study included peanuts, which are technically a legume and not on the paleo plan. That said, the common denominator in all varieties of nuts is FAT. I will say again, NO ONE is more surprised than I that I've lost more than 50 pounds while consuming about 50 percent of my daily calories from fat (not all nuts, of course). Fat is not my enemy. Sugar and grains clearly are.

1 comment:

Vickie said...

My husband (who has no eating issues and is within 2 lbs of his high school, athlete weight) says the addictive power of sugar/processed even impacts him. If he eats it, he wants more, regardless of hunger. I think about that a lot. As you said, easier to eat sane if stay away from it.

I realize for some people, BMI is not accurate. But for me, it was totally accurate and a very good tool to see how much I actually needed to lose.

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