That's why you are fat...

Brennwert der Lebensmittel: 18735 kJ (4475 kcal) Tagesbedarf: 5560 kJ (1328 kcal) 337% des Tagesbedarfs an Energie aufgenommen

I ran the typical intake of a typical day of unrestricted eating through my journalling

 app. Mind you, without the one beer I would usually have had with my dinner. That would add another 200 calories, bringing me to 4675 calories. Assuming the usual amount of walking (the Tagesbedarf number is pure BMR without accounting for movement) that would take my calories out to about 1900,  that would mean an excess of 2775 calories for a typical day. Again, all the while believing I was eating normally. Statistically, eating like that would have made me gain 145 kilos in a single year *shudder*. 

There but for fortune...

Seeing those numbers, what I should be astonished about is not why I did not lose any weight. It is why I am not hopelessly morbidly obese by now. 

I read somewhere that caloric needs are about 300 calories a day elevated in people who smoke. But even adding that, I could have gained 124 kilos in a year eating like that, all the while protesting I did not eat that much.

I keep remembering that quarrel I had with my father after gaining those last twenty kilos in three months, me screaming at him that he did not understand, that it was the meds I had been taking, and that no way on earth could I have overeaten by 2000 calories a day without noticing. 

Boy was I wrong.

If it is possible to go that far above my calories with just one sleeve of cookies, one pack of peanuts, one bowl of chocolate pudding with vanilla sauce and three small salami sausages, while skipping lunch and having a three egg breakfast and a portion controlled dinner, then any day where I allowed myself more than a single indulgence was a complete caloric desaster.

I know why I hesitated so long to do this exercise. I had guessed it would turn out results I would not like. 

What the strict journalling also turns out is the reason why I am once more plateauing, in spite of eating at a felt deficit.  Because the deficit I really eat at is so small that I would take between one and two months to lose a single kilogram of fat. 

I weigh 94 kilos, still, as of today. And I have about 50 per cent of body fat. 

And I want to get down to at least 69 kilograms. That would be normal BMI. 

Which means I have 25 kilograms to lose. If I really want to be there by next November I need a 420 calories a day deficit. Not a 150 calories one. 

And all for those indulgences that are so not worth it. 

Psyching myself up for the big cut. 

It's difficult

No, once again, I'm not eating a lot. And still the deficit I run comes in about 300 calories a day, on good days. Way too little to make remarkable inroads into the weight that has to come off until next November. 

On the things I no longer may eat or drink list, the green peppermint or sour apple liqueurs are top contenders. Seeing how they amount to some 600-700 calories a glass, I think it is better not to have them in the house at all. Cheese, from a block or  Camembert style, and salami are next. Of cookies I dare not even think any more. And the bread or rusk with a generous pat of butter plus peanut butter habit has to go, too. 

Seeing all of these work out on my reports, the real miracle is that I did not completely balloon up when not restricting them. 

Slogging on

For the first time in ages, there's a solid downward trend in my weight curve for this month. Seems like I am doing something right. 

Then again, the hubs has been out of town for almost three weeks by now, which saved me from having to cook. 

Still, I kept going well over my allotted intake at BMR level. Seeing just how small a deviation from routine will nix all of a whole day weightloss-wise is actually quite scary. And seeing how calorie-dense all of my favorite foods are, too. As it is, the only thing I like to eat that will not have to be restricted to mini portions is yoghurt, and even there I have to cut way back on the toppings. 

All the other goodies are apt to swallow up my caloric allowance as fast as I swallow them. Salami, cheese, toast with peanut butter, butter, or even a glass of wine or two add up to way too many calories with me still saying, but I barely ate anything. 

To think that after my afternoon snack of the aforementioned goodies I would still have a whole dinner with the hubs, and dessert, too! 

The astonishing part, it seems, is not that I did not lose any weight, but rather, that I did not gain a lot more. 

And that anybody can live, eat three meals a day, and not look like a tub of lard. I will trial-run a day's worth of meals as I remeber them from Grandma's through MFP. In memory, they were not small meals, and I was not going hungry. Yet, I was not fat back then, either, except in my family's eyes. 

Weight today : 94 kilos.

Ways To Motivate

The headline of this post should be pronounced in my best Darth Vader imitation, followed by "I am your father". It just has occurred to me that there will be another of those cannot miss family celebration affairs coming up next year in November. 

So I would better be back to the weight I had when I was meeting those people for the last time, on pains of being mocked and scorned, or insulted once again for being fat. And it would be even better were I to be substantially below that weight. 

Did I say that part of my motivation up and went when the last such occasion passed? This time, I have a realistic chance of getting down to 63 kilograms if I stick to a 500 calorie a day deficit. Faster, if the deficit were bigger. 

That would be the weight at which the person who will be celebrated couldn't stop joaning me about my weight. It also would be very much normal weight and BMI. 

Now there's a reason to persevere if ever there was one. 

Could It Really Be That Easy?

This weighing and measuring everything stuff brings nasty surprises every day. Nasty in the meaning of catching me very very cold at making excuses. 

As it is, I was absolutely convinced that I was not at all overeating. Convinced enough to get into a screaming match with my father after my most spectacular gain. And even when I realized that I must have been having a bit more food than I remembered, even after catching myself with the biiig plates piled high, I thought that these realizations would have made me able to not overeat. 

Add to this that I mostly kept away from sugar and chocolate, and I was once again flabbergasted at regaining half of the weight I had managed to lose. Reading those Paleo books and blogs with their constant refrain of fat not being bad and do not ever start to count calories, you will be automatically stopping eating when you had enough, made me even more confused. The only thing I got from these is a new problem, namely with cravings for fatty food. 

As it was I would have been dead certain that my daily intake was something around 2000 calories a day and that this ought to be maintenance, and that I would easily be able to keep eating a 1000 calorie a day deficit without having to change too many things about my diet.

Boy was I wrong, again. 

My daily intake is really around 2000 calories, now that I try to cut down and stop myself from mindlessly munching. Before that, it might have been anywhere between 3000 and 4000. 

Cutting down to 1000 calories without using meal replacements would probably not work for me. I can be glad if I make a 500 a day deficit. 

And for every single meal or ingredient, I can tentatively assume it is twice as much and has at least twice as many calories than what I would assume. 

Which makes me wonder if all those calorie counters were off in their values. The present one seems to be spot on, if I look at my numbers. 

What pisses me off the most is that even trying very hard to rein in my eating did not prevent this. 

It Works, But Not Miracles

Watching my Fddb weight curve, I noticed having lost about two real kilograms since I started journalling. So, it does work. 

The kicker is seeing how easily and quickly I could burn through all of my calorie allowance, and then some. 

Even looking at the worst ever weight gaining phase I had, namely, sixteen kilograms in four months on a tricyclic, that does compute to just 933 calories that I ate and drank above my needs daily. 

In other words, a bag of nuts. A single one. Of macadamias, not even the whole one. Or a bar of chocolate plus a few cookies. 

Just adding one of these regularly is enough to explain all of the gain. 

So my shitlording father was right. Objectively, that is. 

What he did not take into account was that there  was a reason why I did overeat so much more while on the meds. And the sad fact that my guesstimating skills when it comes to food are as wrecked as my optical portion gauge. Meaning I have to weigh it and measure it, whatever "it" is. 

If I continue to do so, I have a chance of getting back to normal weight somewhere around two years from now. 

Were I to maintain a 350 calories a day deficit, I would be normal-weighted (BMI 25 ) in exactly 500 days from today, mathematically. 

I will have to keep up a list of the deficits per day, and the running total. 

The fairy tale of the wrecked metabolism and the inability to correctly keep up tallying my intake have cost me enough time in obesity. 

Size 38 Skirt

Not what I am fitting into right now, sadly. My present body size is more like a size 46, which means I can, indeed, buy standard sized clothes. 

But I had all this time wondered why they do not have skirts in the proportion I used to wear any more, namely, slightly below my knees. 

Today I found out why.  Actually, the skirts still have the same length. I saw a size 38 skirt today  that was proportioned exactly the way I remembered my pencil skirts from 63 kilogram times. 

Besides that they had the same skirt in a size 50. They were the exact same length. But the size 50 one was simply wider than long. To think that a size 50 would, at my top weight, not have fit me any more...

One more reason to keep up counting those calories. 

Too slow, too much

I just ran up the running total of 14 days of journalling everything I ate and drank. I did feel that I was restricting myself, still, after two weeks the total deficit is 5137 calories, meaning the deficit I ran up was just 367 calories a day and I lost a paltry 734 grams of fat. Not even a pound a week.