"Eat More and you'll lose weight"

So I just heard it... again. It makes no sense to me but I've heard it enough times that I kind of believe it. I was told that I'm not eating enough to lose weight. Madness I tell you! But so many people who seem to know what they are talking about say it works, so it should work. I think the reason it's so hard for me is that I'm not hungry. I don't like to eat when I'm not hungry. I try to listen to my body and eat the things that it craves and interestingly enough when I am exercising and eating well, I crave healthy foods. Sometimes I crave tuna fish, and I'm not a huge fan of it. Sometimes I crave tomatoes, sometimes I crave bananas which I really don't like. I think that those cravings likely tell me that I need more of a certain kind of food. Of course there are occasional cravings which tell me that I really really really need some chocolate ice cream with caramel sauce drizzled over the top or a JCW's raspberry cheesecake milkshake. I try to ignore those ones, but will sometimes treat myself to a nice sugary dose of fruit snacks which tends to do the trick, or I pop in a nice minty stick of gum and imagine myself in a bathing suit on the beach in Hawaii, that too does the trick. I never deprive myself of eating. I don't NOT eat on purpose. Usually I just forget or I'm busy and before I know it it's 12:30! I don't like to eat a meal before I run and I always intend to run first thing in the morning. I even wake up early so that I can run before the kids get up. But without fail, someone always wakes up or needs help or has a messy diaper or needs signatures for school or SOMETHING and running gets pushed back and thus so does breakfast. I don't mind because I'm not ever hungry. And even after I exercise I'm very rarely hungry. On the nights that I do weights AND at least 30 minutes of cardio I get a little hungry. But if I'm just doing weights or running I'm not any hungrier than I would normally be. I do get thirsty and so I drink quite a bit of water. But that's it.

So I've been reading a TON on this today and keep finding the same thing. Basically it boils down to this. When you don't eat enough calories then your body converts muscle protein into energy the that you need to function. The loss of muscle protein results in the loss of muscle tissue. We all know that muscle burns fat and so when we lose our muscles we also lose the ability to burn fat. Another fact is that if you eat fattening foods it will either be burned by your muscle or it will be deposited into your fat cells. If you want to LOSE fat, then you need to eat less fat and burn more fat by building muscle and doing aerobic exercises. When you exercise a lot you are burning a lot more calories and so your body needs more calories to have enough energy to function.

So I was looking back at this blog and noticed that when I started the blog on April 1st I was 174 lbs. Within a few weeks I was down to 168. I lost 3 pounds that week, and 3 pounds the next week AND the next week. 9 pounds lost in the first 3 weeks. The next week I only lost 2 pounds, then the next week I lost 2 pounds again and since the 7th of May I haven't lost ANY weight. Well that's not entirely true. I've almost lost 1 pound, but I've been hovering somewhere between 161.0 and 161.6 for the past 2 weeks . To me this looks like a plateau! So I'm thinking I'm going to give this another real effort. I'll have to have schedule meal times or I won't remember. Maybe I'll set an alarm on my phone. So that I actually eat. I'm going to be careful not to increase fat or carbs, but instead eat more fruits and veggies and eat breakfast. I need to get my body used to consuming things when I run anyway for the marathon so I guess it won't be the end of the world if I eat before I run as long as it's not a huge bacon and eggs and pancakes and orange juice and as long as I still give myself a little breather between eating and running. So I'm going to try to EAT MORE to LOSE MORE! Hopefully you'll see an increase in my intake over the next few days without an increase of my weight! I've made a goal to be down into the 150's by Monday. That's only 2 pounds, we'll see if eating more will foil my plans.

Just so you know, this goes against everything my brain and body is telling me! Hopefully it will be the jump start that I need though to get me losing again. Time will tell!

Friday May 20, 2010

Weight: 161.0

Exercise: ran 4 miles in 38 minutes jogged 1/2 mile cool down

Food:

8 oz water

5 almonds

20 oz water

2 tiny cookies at Emily's preschool graduation

1 pack fruit snacks

2 cups pasta salad

1 granola bar

20 oz water

Monterrey chicken (chicken, BBQ sauce, bacon, mozz cheese)

1 cup peas

20 oz water

bowl lucky charms cereal

1 apple