Back to bread, but not so fast...

So tomorrow is the end of Passover and I'm finally back to the land of bread, pasta, rice and other awesome carbohydrate-related foods. Awesome.

So, in related news, I've gotten kinda fat. Not overly, just a little bit too portly. It all started in 1st year with the classic "Freshmen 15" which kinda turned into the "Freshmen 25" and then... well you know. Living in the USA and eating USA-sized portions at restaurants has been kinda blah too. So I got home pretty tubby, and not too happy about that. So I kicked into high gear and started exercising a lot this term, and being more careful about my food. In a month I dropped like 9 lbs. Ok so that's a good start, but I ought to lose like 20-30 more... so I kept going, exercising a lot and working hard to keep my food in check. And I didn't move a centimetre!! (Or, um, enter small weight measurement here... "ounce"?)

So in 1 month I dropped 9 lbs, and then in 3 months I didn't drop any more. Now, in the past 8 days of Pesach I've lost at least 3 lbs. This is an interesting turn of events. So interesting that I am going to take this as an obvious sign that I need to learn from this. My sister the genius Health Ph.D. student told me that eating too much carbohydrate makes your system unable to process through the carbohydrate and start burning the excess fat in your body. This is bad, of course. Now, what better way to test the theory that I am eating too much carbohydrate by putting me on (essentially) Jewish Atkins for a week. :) Now I know I still need to balance foods, but this is an insanely clear sign that I have been overdoing it. And that food actually DOES have a BIG effect on my weight. (Duh?!) So I think this is giving me something else to focus on. I eat a LOT of fruit and more vegetables now too, and I hardly ever drink juice and never have pop or other junk in the house. But I think an area I've been neglecting is the over-abundance of carbohydrates I seem to be eating without even thinking about it.

Also... I've been hungry a lot this week. I haven't been eating every time I am hungry because, well, there's nothing to eat. I have a bunch of cereal and snacks and random food in the cupboards, but it's all not cool in Passover-food realm, so it's been off the menu for the past week. Instead of eating I've just been doing other stuff. I think maybe I eat sometimes when I need a break from something, as like a buffer activity. I'd say I eat when I'm bored, but I always have like 1,000 things going on at once, so I don't think I'm ever really bored of doing anything. But I do a bunch of stuff, then take a break, get something to eat, and then go onto the next activity. I think this practice in turn makes me eat more that I need to eat, and in fact I am probably not even eating good stuff (or at least it's too much carbohydrate, which is blocking any fat burning that could be happening.)

Interesting. Also finally I am getting enough sleep now that classes are over. I am notoriously bad for getting less sleep that I should be getting, and there appears to be a clear connection between people not eating enough and increases in appetite and weight gain. Also, University has been nuts and really stressful most of the time, and I'm sure that doesn't help either.

So I think I've discovered the potential psychological reasons for gaining the weight in the first place, but that doesn't really help me now. I need to keep this rockin'. The problem I suppose is that in the land of plenty (i.e. USA), the portion sizes are nuts and the temptation to eat all of the food you are given at a restaurant is way too high. It's really good, and there's frankly waaaaaaay too much food. Almost every restaurant does this, and it's really bad.

So what's the plan. There are clearly some potential problems. And I don't have to lose a bazillion lbs, just about another 20 or 30 would be optimal. I think my start is that I need to start calming down on the amount of food I am eating, and cut out this always eating between activities business. I am already drinking a lot of water and tea so that is taken care of. Next I need to be incredibly careful in Europe. It's going to be AWESOME and the food is going to be SO good. So I need to take it easy on the amount of everything I eat cause it'll be nuts and I'll want to try everything. Exercise won't be a problem because I'll be hiking and walking around everywhere, so that'll be fine. But it's really kinda blah and I really want to do something more about this. I'm on the way, but frankly that's not good enough. I gotta kick this into a higher gear.

I guess that means going less insane on the bread tomorrow that I had initially expected. Oh well, in the long run, food doesn't really make a difference to anything anyway. It's good but it lasts for a second and then it's gone. I gotta force myself to keep this attitude. It's not that I make bad choices, I eat tons of broccoli, yogurt, milk, fish... etc. But the problem is the amount. FOR SURE.

Anyhow that's my rant about why/how I gotta keep this weight loss plan going at full speed ahead. Good stuff.