Fast day today. Sods law being what it is, Chris fasts for a day and sheds kilos, I fast for a day and gain 200g. Both of these are noise. One of them pisses me off (and it isn't Chris being lighter).
After 8 months of alternately calorie counting and filling the empty miserable hollow of my heart with cake, I am, quelle surprise, the exact same weight as I was in January. Whoop de fucking doop. I'm toying with taking up smoking again. I reckon my obesity is probably just as unhealthy, and given my level of fitness (pretty good, just for clarification) reduced lung capacity would be less of a cycling hindrance than the spare 20+kg I'm lugging around.
Shame it's so vile.
I can empathise.
Food is my drug and skinny people will never understand that you can address the disappointment of gaining weight by eating more.
At least with Heroin and cigarettes it's possible to use total abstinence as a recovery technique.
After my post-PBP blob-out I finally said "enough is enough" last week (PBP anniversary would you believe). I've said "enough his enough" many times but, in the space of 1 year I have experienced the extremes of my fitness (2 weeks after PBP I was flying on my bike effortlessly and clothes fit me) and lack thereof (I'm struggling up hills and running out of belt holes).
You see I'm fighting an evil side of my brain, it really is like the angel and devil stood on my shoulders, whispering conflicting advice.
I guess that the devil is actually a million years of evolution telling me to eat while I can, because there won't be an Antelope to eat tomorrow (substitute Chicken Tikka as appropriate), and the angel is my conscious brain thinking how great it would be to ride up hills and wear 32" waist jeans again (without taking a big deep breath and hoiking on my belt of course).
You see I could eat everything in my fridge followed by 20 Cadbury's chocolate mini-rolls (and I'm not even joking).
So, what I learned over the years is:
1. Your Brain will trick you into giving up. It really will do anything to make you give up, make you depressed, make you consider smoking and, most of all, will make you start eating. Your brain really wants you to start eating. It will make you depressed, tell you to eat something to make yourself better and then make you depressed for eating...ahhh..what a wanker my Brain is.
2. I don't enjoy eating as much I as think I will. My Brain tricks me into thinking I will. If I pig out I ALWAYS regret it afterwards. Damn that fucking brain. I could make a video to myself, to watch before I eat too much, "You really won't enjoy this as much as your brain is telling you..you fool".
I don't think I need the video now, I've learned what my brain is doing.
3. I prefer feeling fit and light on the bike to any meal I've ever had. I prefer looking good in clothes to the feeling after a heavy meal.
Of course I love the feeling of eating a guilt-free heavy meal, 70km into a 200km ride say.
4. I know it's frustrating that, after a week of dieting, you gained a few pounds. That's just your Brain's way of saying "give up, it just isn't working". But it will. Usually the following week I make up for that "noise" and things get back on plan.
You just have to write that week off and know that, over a month, it will work out.
Ergo. People weigh themselves far too frequently.
5. Weight loss is simple maths. Calories in vs Calories out. I know it's impossible NOT to lose weight if I burn more calories than I eat.
Therefore I don't kid myself. I don't have a slow metabolism, I have a metabolism and that's that. Slow metabolisms can't make calories out of air. If you continue to gain weight then you are eating too much. Your evil Brain won. It told you "you have a slow metabolism", that "you get fat just by breathing" so "what's the point?".
If this happens then you are kidding yourself.
6. 3500 calories = 1 pound of fat (give or take). You gain a pound of weight then you ate 3500 calories too many.
You burn an extra 3500 calories then your body will source that by "chopping off a lump of body fat and lobbing it on the fire".
1 pound a week is a perfectly sensible and achievable amount to lose in a week, that's 500 calories a day deficit, but let's use 1/2 pound a week, or 250 calories a day. 250 calories (yes, yes..Kcals, I know) is really nothing. It's a chocolate bar or a couple of spuds.
1/2 pound a week is 26 pounds a year, let's call that 2 stone a year.
Coincidentally, 2 stone would get me to 12 stone "something" (I don't care about anything else, I just want to see 12st xxx on the scales because I've only see 13st, 14st and 15st for the last 10 years).
7. If I look at the long term, like PBP 2015 then 1/2 pound, or even 1/4 pound per week will get me into great shape. I just have to battle my Brain until then (actually it's a forever deal).
So, summary (for me, if this is going to work): Prepare to have a life-long fight with my evil brain, always remember how much I regret eating lots, remember how great it is to be light on a bike, weigh myself every month and that 1 pound a month is perfectly fine.
This may make sense to food-addicts but naturally skinny types will tend to think "just don't eat so much" in the same way that Tory MPs tell Heroin addicts to stop taking so much Heroin.
