Spiked and spooked

This is scary.
Over the weekend, I was abroad in a place that served the standard European food, namely, bread and rolls for breakfast, and a starch (potatoes and dumplings, to be exact) accompanying dinner, plus, one- just one- afternoon coffee accompanied by cake.
I know, I should have just said no.
But I also wanted to know the extent of what eating that way would do to me.
And going on a two-day fast wasn´t what I had in mind, either.
So what did two and a half days of eating standard fare amount to?
A four-pound gain, that´s what.
In spite of doing 45 minutes of power walking every morning, and being very busy all day long, too.
I don´t want to know how big the damage would have been had I just sat on my franny all weekend long and eaten the same stuff.
Seeing that number when weighing myself on Monday has been one of the scarier moments of my weight loss journey. If it is possible for my weight to explode upwards like that when all I´ve done is eat what I used to believe was "normal" food, I am back to the point of choice- either I say farewell to a lot of things I have all my life liked to eat, or else I will, by the anniversary of my most recent weight loss attempt, be right back where I started from.
That the lower back pain that started it all is back, too, is another warning signal.
It seems that the, in total, four kilos I have regained from my lowest weight are exactly the difference between functioning and not-so-functioning joints.
So, they have to come back off fast.

I did, yesterday, manage to avoid carbs almost completely, and was down again by two pounds this morning.
And I did my morning walks yesterday and today, and am intending to keep that up unless there´s a thunderstorm or something of that kind going on (getting hit by lightning or a dead branch isn´t healthy, either, and we had several such weather events this year already).
So, here it is for y´all to see:
Distance to goal weight at highest recorded weight: 40 kilos
Weight lost from August 2010 to April 2011: 20 kilos
of which I regained : 4 kilos

Which means 24 kilos still  to get rid of. 52.8 pounds for the metrically challenged. 
And this time I am not doing this in order to conform to some impossible beauty ideal.
I´m doing it because I do not want to become immobile again.
I´m doing it because I want to be able to run again.
I´m doing it because I want to be there for DH as long as he wants me to.
Saying farewell to the idea of doing what I need to lose the weight and then being able to eat standard food again isn´t easy, but this weekend has shown me all too clearly what would happen.
I don´t want to go back to where I was.
And that means I have to change what I eat, for life.



Julia