The FastDay Forum

Having a nice holiday, some cycling. No scales no stress

Hi all, another week down and ... 1/4 pound lost! There's a reason its so little - I'm quite astonished to find last week's weight change was actually negative!

Every diet includes some real challenges & last weekend was just that. I was at my end-July target after both diet days last week, but the weekend included a neighbourhood get-together, a friend's big-birthday party and a wonderful and completely unexpected meal out with an old friend. Copious food and fizz throughout.

Back on the straight & narrow this coming week - 1 pound to lose to meet my end-July target. I do need to negotiate my son's birthday tonight - incl. cake. But I'm very close and travelling hopefully.

What's really motivating is that my close to 7lb total weight drop since mid-June is visible. A friend who hadn't seen me for a while remarked on it on Saturday. And clothes fit better. And I love the feeling of confidence that goes with all that. Yea!

Good luck to everyone for next week. May we all achieve our targets!

[Tracieknits]

That's fabulous, @WarriorPrincess!!! It's so nice when other's notice

I hope you have a great time with your son's birthday.

I think @cblasz and I totally get where you're coming from re: challenges. There's always so much going on in the summer. But it's kind of amazing what a few days of behaving can do to correct the damage (the damage that can be done in just a few days of overeating). I'm still up 1.3 since the 10th (my most recent low) but I'm down 5.7 from the day I started low(ish) carb on the 26th. And I'm behaving again.

One weird thing about low carb is it seems to be dramatically connected to water weight - gaining and losing water quickly. Here's some reading -

https://8fit.com/nutrition/glycogen-glu ... er-weight/

It’s all about the glycogen stores — as it turns out, each gram of glycogen is bound to 3-4 hefty grams of water. So, as your body burns its way through the reduced dietary carbs and into the glycogen stores, the water attached to the glycogen flushes away as well — resulting in the phenomenon commonly known as “water weight.” There’s no fat loss here, yet — the glycogen and accompanying water’s simply been squeezed out of your muscles and liver.
This also explains why plenty of folks experience an alarming weight gain in the day just following a cheat meal. Even if the ingested carbs are at a moderate level (i.e. consumption of a grilled cheese sammie, not an entire deep-fried birthday cake), your greedy liver and muscles snatch up as much glucose as they can take, and up to four grams of weighty water accompany each grabbed gram of glycogen. Bam! Instant significant weight gain.
Water weight: easy come, easy go, neither cause for panic nor glee. Truly incinerating the nasty fat requires sticking to a low carb diet for a while, taking advantage of fat burning mode over time.

Well, I'm back from Washington D.C. I had a pretty good time, despite the rain. I have to say I'm somewhat proud of myself because I stuck with my eating window every day. Last summer, I struggled with that, but now I'm really used to it and was able to do it even on vacation!! I did not however eat well during the eating window, necessarily! We did get a lot of walking in, but still I expect there to be some damage on the scale come Monday. Maybe I'll have to try to get in a fast in next week!

Hi Everyone,
I'm back from vacation! We had a fun time and I did a pretty good job sticking with the health plan! I didn't fast, but I avoided sugar, no desserts! and tried to avoid carbs. Most of the carbs I had were from drinks! I came back and weigh exactly the same as when I left, so thats good to me. I'm going to fast on Monday. I keep thinking of the quote from the article at the beginning of the challenge, how Michael Jordan just makes up his mind once. I'm like, ok, l made up my mind to lose this weight, so I'm going to stick with it!
Good luck everyone!

[Tracieknits]

That's great that both of you managed to stick to your goals on vacation @cblasz and @NYCNYC2013! Especially how you maintained your weight NYCNYC That must feel great! And Cblasz, imagine how much worse it would have been if you hadn't stuck to your eating windows! You still did something positive for your health every day.

I am proud to state I stayed ON TRACK every single day. I ate ~20g carbs/day Saturday through Wednesday. Thursday, Friday and Saturday I kept it to ~60g/day. I only drank alcohol and Thursday, Friday and Saturday (another goal of mine was to limit drinking to 3 days per week, or only 4 days per week if two of those days were 1 glass instead of 1/2 bottle).

and I was rewarded because today my weight was back to the low I hit on July 10 *BUT* I now have 1.5% less body fat

So I'm saying I totally deserve my 3rd star because I'm quite pleased with my progress.

The upside is that I never have to be hungry. If I'm actually hungry, I eat. But I'm just not hungry until about noonish now. And then I'm so satisfied I'm not interested in snacking until dinner. Sometimes I want a little something at maybe 10pm, but that seems to be more when i am careful to eat *just enough* at dinner. When I am less careful with that, I don't get hungry at 10pm.

today we had these "pancakes" for breakfast and they were really really good: https://www.dietdoctor.com/recipes/lchf ... pped-cream

@nycnyc2013 you really did a good job on vacation!! I'm so glad the article has been inspiring. It has helped me to when I realized I could commit to a couple of things and not 10 things at once!!!

Thanks @Tracieknits! You are absolutely right and I have to say even though I didn't eat particularly healthy (and definitely not low carb) I did get full pretty easily and usually only ate half of my meals. I only had a couple of "desserts" too and shared one of them with my friend. I've peeked at the scale at it doesn't look too bad, so far. I'll see how it looks in the morning though! It seems like you are doing REALLY well with this low carb thing after all! Good for you!! Congrats on the loss. I'll give you another star and maybe you'll be down the 5lbs. this week! You have definitely rocked this challenge!

Tomorrow is the end of July, of course some of you might need the rest of the week to finish up! I think that most people did pretty well on the challenge!!

Well I weighed in this morning and am up 4/10 lb. That isn't too bad considering I was on vacation for part of it. So at this point I've lost 2 lbs. this month. Not what I was hoping for, but still not bad considering it's the summer. At least it is going in the right direction! I might wait a couple of days and get in one final weigh in for the challenge!

I'm worried that my scale is acting funny. I think (hope) maybe it just needs new batteries. When I first stepped on it this morning, it was much lower than I would've expected. So I stepped on it a couple more times and was able to get a consistent number that made sense! I'll have to try to get new batteries soon.

Please check in with your final results this week!
@Tracieknits
@Sassy1
@Orchid
@P-JK
@nycnyc2013
@WarriorPrincess

[Tracieknits]

OK, well it's the 31st.

I stuck to plan the whole month, except for a couple of planned days of vacation. I had planned to cheat (does that count?)

I even modified my plan to get more strict. I'm now doing 20g/day 3 or 4 days per week and up to 60g the other days.

I'm down 3.3 pounds since July 1, but I'm down 7.1 pounds since June 26, when I started low carb (I had a very large loss June 30). I'm also down 1.5% body fat!

I'm giving myself all five stars because I feel I earned them

Now I'm only 2.6 pounds above the low I hit last year before my mom's hospitalizations. And I feel I can keep doing this low carb thing combined with the eating windows. Bruce and I feel pretty comfortable with it.

I'm off to the butcher shop to stock up. We're having "crackslaw" tonight. I'm making the indian version (my notes on how I prepare it are at the bottom of the comments): https://www.dietdoctor.com/recipes/indi ... e-stir-fry

Seems like we all did a great job! I'm so happy to be down below 180, for the first time in at least a year! I've been stricter with my fasts, which I think helped a lot, and I've been doing great at avoiding sugar. I'm fasting today so I'll do my final July challenge weigh in tomorrow to see if I can get rid of any more weight!
Will there be an August Challenge????

Didn't make it! A decision, not a surprise - life intervened in an unexpected, wonderful but highly calorific way this weekend. I have at least managed to get through 4 lovely celebrations in 2 weeks without gaining any weight. The 5/2 works for me because I don't need to beat myself up about missing targets, its a delay not a derailment - just alter the plan ... & join the next challenge!

[Tracieknits]

Didn't make it! A decision, not a surprise - life intervened in an unexpected, wonderful but highly calorific way this weekend. I have at least managed to get through 4 lovely celebrations in 2 weeks without gaining any weight. The 5/2 works for me because I don't need to beat myself up about missing targets, its a delay not a derailment - just alter the plan ... & join the next challenge!

Maintaining weight despite 4 celebrations is a huge achievement and something to be very proud of!!

Back from holiday on the same weight as when I left. So mission accomplished next stop will be to succeed in 4 years maintaining in October. Good luck on your next challenges

I am also back from a fabulous holiday, though don't think the impact on my weight has been the same as P-JK... Not weighing, it is harder to tell the damage, but I expect I put on a few pounds, based on the tightness of my clothes. When on hols, I eat a lot more processed carbs than I normally do, it's hard to do otherwise (eg, making a large salad for lunch just isn't convenient when traveling, sandwiches are far easier, and we do like to support the local bakeries - would you believe I had the best vanilla slice ever at a fuel service centre in the middle of nowhere?!).

So definitely no more stars for me for the July challenge, and I shall be joining the Labor Day one!

Thanks for running this one, @cblasz

Great job everyone! I think most everyone accomplished something, even if it was just maintaining!! Hopefully, we all did better than we would've done without the challenge!!