Getting Back on the Horse

I should have known better: the holidays. I've been struggling to hit new diet lows since roughly the third week of November; I barely hit a new diet low in mid-December, but for several weeks I had been cycling up and down an 8-lb. range from the diet low.

My mom, who was widowed last year, had been pushing me for years to come home for the holidays. Being single, I normally had regularly until 2009. My professional opportunities had suffered during the Great Recession and in 2009 I was booked on an hourly subcontract through the holidays. In some cases since then, I ran into budgeting issues or I had pending assignments including possible short-term relocation which made it impossible to book flights in advance. Some of those same considerations were also in effect this past holiday season, but I had a special birthday to celebrate (I was originally due on Christmas but was born a few days later).

The holiday pounds. Mom usually did a lot of holiday baking for us, then the grandkids and the great-grandkids. But because of dietary restrictions, Mom over recent years had cut down to the Christmas staple of chocolate crinkle cookies and maybe a pie. (It wasn't just desserts. In Franco-American (French-Canadian) culture, there are ground pork based foods, like cretons and tourtière, that have been personal favorites since childhood, but Mom had stopped doing them for years before I stopped coming.) I almost never eat dessert but allowed some modest exceptions, including a handful of crinkles before my older nephew took the rest of them to his baby sister in Colorado. There were the usual things I did during my trip home, especially Tex-Mex, including breakfast tacos, Mexican food, and Texas BBQ. A personal favorite is a local chain, Bill Miller's BBQ (where they also serve great iced tea, a Texas staple). I also had pizza a couple of times,on my birthday (a deep dish place) and a place Mom and Dad liked in a nearby town. Mom also had made a couple of my favorite dishes, the above-mentioned tourtière and a lasagne (which she now tweaked with Italian sausage vs. ground beef.)  For Christmas, Mom brought a smoked ham from this smokehouse she also uses to send out food gifts for the holidays to my local brother's house, and we had a turkey on New Year's. She made waffles and pancakes on a few occasions, served ice cream a couple of times, and I joined in an occasional glass of wine before dinner.

Long story short, I ate far more carbs than I have in years and bigger meals overall, and Mom knows I have a weight problem and didn't want to add to the problem. I also joined her on brisk daily walks, so I got more exercise. I figured with all the carbs I probably gained the usual 6 pounds or so in water, but I had been gone shy of 2 weeks. Still, I was startled to see myself up by 10--beyond the 8-lb. cycle during November and December. And then it went up a couple of more pounds, even back on the grind. But the good news is that since that high, I've had one of the longest whooshes to date--about 13 pounds. Daily drops except yesterday, which was a special case. (An apartment neighbor's water pipe burst, which led to some of my floors and carpets being flooded. My digital scale was on one of the floors and is now dead. I had to go out yesterday and buy a replacement scale at Wal-Mart.) I usually try to weigh myself the first thing in the morning, so when I tested the scale, I was slightly up over the prior day, but that was probably a reflection of when in the day I took a reading--I had already eaten 2 meals, etc.

As it stands, I'm just 2 pounds plus over my mid-December diet low. I do know the current whoosh is long in the tooth and wouldn't at all be surprised  to wake up tomorrow and see a 3-lb. bounce. But it does seem I've already taken off the holiday weight. The problem is that since November I've been off my target 1-1.5 lb. weekly loss pace: I'm probably about 10 pounds higher than I thought I would be. I probably need to tweak my daily exercise.

My latest dietary tweak is plain Greek yogurt and no-sugar-added frozen berries/cherries. I'll defrost a handful of fruit and mix it into yogurt, and I'll sweeten with a packet or 2 of stevia.