11-Day Challenge Done

I'm done. I completed it. 11 days, tracking and staying within my calories. I'm glad it was 11 and not 14, because I'd honestly have to wave the white flag of surrender.

Doing this helped me realize where some of my pitfalls are.

Some of it is just simply time. I know I posted the other day about managing and prioritizing my health, and forcing myself to take the time. I never said it was easy!

It took time for me to plan my meals out, run them through the recipe calculator, make sure I had foods stocked. I almost wish I could quit my job and simply focus on me, me and ME! Work out, knit, cook, plan, clean, tidy up my life. Oh what an indulgence that would be.

Tonight I ended up eating a Lean Cuisine for dinner, even though I had one for lunch. I just couldn't take trying to put together another meal. Too fatigued. My husband is not feeling well, so it might be that I'm fighting something off. I also think that by about yesterday, my body started to go into a bit of a frantic calorie search. Kind of like when you do the low-carb thing, and your body can deal with it, detoxing and lowering your carbs - then all of a sudden it goes into shock mode and is like, OK for real now  WHERE ARE MY CARBS?! My body was asking where all the calories were.

I could feel it.

It got my attention last night. It didn't get the best of me, but it made me sit up and notice. It scared me a bit, too. I was watching the 20/20 special on about people who had lost a significant amount of weight, and one thing they touched on was the body's --the fat cell's-- lifelong desire to retain it's former shape. That losing isn't the entire battle. Maintenance is even harder because, at some point, your body starts wondering when the experiment is over, and when things will return to normal again.

Scary. Makes sense, though, as I can't imagine how I could survive on 1200 calories a day. Right now I'm at 1700 and there are days that I feel they are more than plenty - but more often there are days where I feel like I am going through torture.

Being active helps, because you can eat more, as long as you're burning it off. I'm not saying I'm stopping. I'm just saying it is definitely a life-long issue.