Hi everyone. Today I’m joining Di of Pensitivity101 for Saturday Swapit, a weekly weight loss meme. I am not intending for this to become a weekly feature, but, because I had a dietitian’s appointment yesterday, I wanted to share some things I learned.
First though, I have a major win to share: when stepping on the scale yesterday, it told me I’m now 70.1kg. This means I’ve crossed the line back from obese to just plain overweight! I did kind of trivialize the achievement by saying it’s the absolute minimum I had to lose to cross this line and hence I may be back into the obese category next week. That may be so, but I did lose 1.7kg since starting on my food plan five weeks ago. That may not sound like much, but I’d rather lose the weight slowly and keep it off than lose more weight only to gain it all back and then some.
Like I said, I’m doing my healthy eating plan under a dietitian’s supervision. The main goal is not weight loss, but relative mental stability with respect to food and a healthy eating structure. You see, I have a history of bulimic tendencies and had a slip-up with respect to purging just before Christmas. Every opportunity to eat still leads to inner conflict.
With respect to this, the dietitian taught me about my negative and positive voices: the healthy-eating voice vs. the bulimic voice. Even if you’re not bulimic, you’ll likely recognize some of the disordered things the negative voice is telling me, such as that, if you’ve eaten a “bad” food, now the day’s gone to waste and you can just as easily call it a cheat day and binge eat whatever you want. The reality is, though, each healthy food choice will ultimately contribute to your weight loss (or other healthy lifestyle goal).
Another thought is that you have to make up for one small treat by restricting on another food. The idea that this thought is unhealthy, may contradict the previous one, but, in reality, it’s all about balance. If you’ve had one small treat that’s not on your food plan in the morning, it doesn’t mean the day’s gone to waste, but it doesn’t mean you need to be restricting or making up for it later in the day either. It doesn’t mean you can have said treat each and every day, of course. Your food plan is there for a reason, after all.
Another thing I asked the dietitian about is late evening snacking. I have a serving of fruit on my food plan in the evening. My staff felt that, for practical reasons, it’d be best if they’d offer it to me at 9:15PM. I countered that, since this is pretty close to my bedtime, I wouldn’t burn it off then. Thankfully, the dietitian was able to reassure me that people’s digestion works 24 hours a day. It’s a myth that late evening snacking causes you not to burn off the calories you consume!
A Multitude of Musings 
Well done Astrid
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Thank you so much! 🙂
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You’re welcome
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Congratulations on your weight loss. That is great news and thanks for your contribution. We are all different and there is help available for all of us. No day is a wasted day and as you say it is all a matter of balance. Food plans vary for the individual and I am glad things are working for you. Marvellous!
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Thanks so much for the compliment on my weight loss and for your kind comment. I agree, each of us has different experiences and different food plans or approaches that work for us.
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I believe if something works, to stick with it.
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I completely agree with that. It is only early days for me, so I’m not yet sure whether my food plan works in the long run or whether I can stick with it, but I hope it does and I can.
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If it’s early days Astrid, you will soon find out. How often do you see your dietician?
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I currently see her every other week, so I’ve now seen her three times. The first week, contact went via E-mail through my assigned staff, but I’m so glad I am able to meet with her face-to-face now.
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That’s great!
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That’s terrific, you really have done good.
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Thanks for saying that! ☺️
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So proud of your accomplishment and steps toward becoming healthier. I was anorexic for a few years. Never bulimic. But I have been inclined to call a cheat day just because I slightly overindulged for one meal. I would think to myself that I can just get back to dieting the following day, and continue to overindulge.
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I’m so sorry about your experiences with anorexia. That must’ve been so hard. As for cheat days, that’s pretty normal I guess. This weekend, I’m mostly having a cheat weekend, in that I’m not keeping my food log and not being too strict about getting back onto the food plan. I still try to make some healthy food choices though. As a side note, the food log is not something required by my dietitian, but something I decided on myself, so I’m not really cheating on the plan by not keeping it.
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