initial success but ultimate failure

I went out of town over the weekend, taking four days to drive to Kentucky (from our home in Wisconsin) and to attend a wedding. Last week I had posted about my fears concerning road snacks.

I decided that I would pre-plan all of my snacks and to make it easier to document by separating what I had bought into 100 calorie packs. That worked well — on the way there!

I had allotted myself 300 calories worth of snack food on the way there and I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that I didn’t even need them. One of the dips into the snack bag was for the raw veggies. It was by far the biggest bag, as I could fit lots of baby carrots and celery sticks into a bag valued at 100 calories compared to a bag of candy or crackers. The other two times I went for the snack bag I pulled out a granola bar and three orange candy slices.

At the end of the day, I recorded everything I ate that day on a piece of paper in the hotel room. After the road snacks had been accounted for, I was doing ok, but the dessert at the rehearsal dinner put me over my caloric intake limit for the day. Not by much, though — I consumed roughly 1575 calories on Friday.

That was the END of my being careful! On Friday morning before leaving on the trip, I weighed 190 pounds. On Tuesday morning when I had my next opportunity to weigh myself, I shrieked in horror when I saw 201 on the scale! How the HE– could I possibly gain 11 pounds in four days?!!!!!

I don’t know, but whatever it was, I hope to never repeat it again in my entire life. I spent the entire day in a depressed stupor. I had little desire to eat today, I took a three hour nap with my daughter in the afternoon. I had little patience with my bickering older two kids. My wonderful husband, who, despite having just as much work to catch up on as I did, offered twice to watch our little one so that I could “lay down” or “get away” or do whatever I needed to do. (I didn’t take him up on the offer, telling him I really didn’t know what I wanted.)

Anyway, for those of you equally astounded, here are some possibilities:

• my “time of the month” started on Thursday of last week
• my sleep patterns were thrown off from travel
• I ingested approximately 10,000 calories in the three day period Saturday through Monday
• despite sweating a lot in 100 degree heat, I got little exercise during the trip

Take a look at that third point… isn’t that disgusting? Most of the time I knew exactly what I was doing and didn’t care. I ate wedding cake, sugar cookie wedding favors (even the ones my kids collected), candy from the snack bag, fattening fast food options, etc. etc. etc. Some of the time I can blame ignorance. For example, one of our meals was at Cracker Barrel and my entree consisted of two chicken breasts with a side of cooked cabbage and a small salad. That chicken, according to nutritional information I looked up after I had already eaten it, was 1420 and the complete meal (which included a corn muffin and biscuits) came to 2031 calories alone. I thought I was being good choosing the cabbage and salad as my two side choices! And, although I knew neither the cornbread nor biscuits were good choices, again, I wanted them and ate them anyway.

My worst sins of the weekend include, but unfortunately are not limited to:

1. My husband and I stopped at Dairy Queen when Sarah was napping in the back of the van and the older kids were being supervised while we were supposedly running an errand. I did manage to choose a small Strawberry Golden Oreo blizzard, but at 620 calories, I should have not even agreed to stopping there. The saddest thing is, afterward, I felt like I was “getting away with something” like a love affair. My husband joked that for one day I wouldn’t have to report my calories to “Lance” (Armstrong, via the Daily Plate, which is the online calorie counter I use). Little did he know I would continue that scandalous behavior over the rest of the weekend and not feel accountable for anything I ate. I cast away all and was very reckless. I honestly equate my actions and feelings with some sort of sordid love affair, or what I imagine it would feel like, anyway.
2. After I got home on Monday night, I duly logged everything I could remember eating over the weekend (I had kept an exact written log on Friday and Saturday but was just going by memory for my Sunday and Monday calories) into the computer. After seeing how poorly I had done (remember, I didn’t weigh myself until Tuesday morning) I had justified night-time snacking, which I have not done for a LONG time, by saying “Oh well. I’ve blown it already. I might as well go hog wild.” Well, not only did I snack, but I snacked BIG time, taking in about 728 calories after my kids and husband had already gone to bed.

I don’t know what happened. I feel like a freight train ran over me…. knocked out the sensible person that I am and left me half comatose. I feel like crap — sick to my stomach and with a headache. I’m tired. Crabby. Miserable. Depressed.

I had promised myself during my weight loss journey I would never gain back more than ten pounds. To do that, I said, would be too much of a yo-yo and I’d be at increased risk for putting it all back on. I never thought I would put that much weight back on in such a short period of time! I did the math on the calories, and I still don’t know how (even taking in 10,000 calories over the three days) that much additional weight is on the scale. I guess I just shocked my body so badly that my balance was incredibly disturbed.

Today, as I mentioned, I didn’t feel like doing much of anything, including eat. I did consume about 940 calories though, well below my 1400 goal.

Tonight, after my husband and kids were in bed, I went for a drive in the convertible. Oddly, I drove to the YMCA but stayed in the parking lot. I had thought about working out. I wanted to punish my body through exercise as fiercely as I had punished it by shoving all that food in it. I knew that abusing my muscles would not help anything and I’d only end up “hurting” more. Besides, by the time I made it there, they were going to be closing in 25 minutes anyway. I did sit in the parking lot, under the stars with the top down, and listened to some very soothing music. I cried. I found the experience to be helpful. I think if I had access to a chapel or some similar quite place, I would have gone there. I was searching for the type of strength that I needed to keep me going.

My soul aches knowing that my prior two months of hard work has potentially been wiped out by a weekend of reckless abandon and abhorrent eating choices.

However, the positive and optimistic person that I am, knows that I must put this horrible mistake behind me, learning from it so as not to repeat it. I need to re-dedicate myself to my ultimate goal and look forward to when I can get back to 190 so the downward progress can resume.

I hope and pray that most (please, at least half) of the 11 pounds is just water weight or lack of sleep or something that quickly rebounds. I’m willing and anxious to put in the work to undo my mess.

There. I admitted it. My story is not all successes. I wish it were, but if that were the case, I might not be as much help to other readers that struggle in their weight loss journey as well.

I don’t know whether to ask for prayers or a swift kick in the ass. If you care to comment with either, I’ll take whatever you have to offer and use it for benefit …

Tags: cheating, moments of weakness, promises, rapid weight gain