And here we go AGAIN!!

Posted on February 7, 2016

Here we go again! If you had the pleasure of being in my last dietbet group, which had an outstanding pot of over $130,000, it was a blast and you know that I blog almost on the daily. I wish I could tell you (for my new readers) that I have a Ray Bradberry style with the plot twists of M. Night Shyamalan but sadly no…no I don’t.

One of the great things though is that I’m an honest, sarcastic person that won’t tell you everyday how awesome all of this is and that losing weight is easiest thing ever. I’m not that platies instructor that giggles with her perfect body while doing what seems to be the impossible and just tells you to “believe” that you can do it and it will happen. I’m here to remind you that this is hard work. I’m the honest kid in the back of the class that reminds the teacher that homework was due before the bell rings.

It is hard work but it can be fun if you look at it in the right light; you reap an abundant reward. (Not just the money, although that is what keeps me going, I can’t stand to lose out on currency when I know all I have to do was get off my couch.) I just finished a Kickstarter that went extremely well. I tried a spin class for the first time which almost killed me. My run went from getting winded at 5 minutes to 25 and I lost 8.1 pounds!

Now here we go again. After my last dietbet I wanted to take a 4-day break to relax a bit. Not stress over hitting the gym, counting calories and pushing play on the DVD player or the treadmill. That is what I did and damn did I do it well. Bailey (my step-daughter who is braving the trenches with me) weighed in on Thursday and we both made our weight by points!! (.1 and .3 to be exact!) I wanted to celebrate by going to one of my favorite restaurants (BJ’s) to order what I had been craving for 4 weeks!

Jumping in the car with lightning speed my step kids followed in suit as if we just robbed a bank and needed to cross the boarder before the cops caught on. Pulling into the parking lot right when the eatery opened, yes right at 11, we were ready to get our grub on. We raced to the door eager to view the foods we had said no to for so long. The waitress passed out the menus like a poker dealer for the playoffs and gave us a minute to look it over. I immediately went to the burger section. I wanted cheese and bacon all resting on a toasted bun with crispy onions and BBQ sauce. My mouth watered as I found what I was looking for and that they added a BRISKET on top! Yes, more meat on meat! (Sorry for the vegetarians out there!) This was going to be everything I wanted and more. Bailey ordered the Mac and Cheese while my step son Dylan copied my order. (I always say its okay to copy as long as you copy the right cat! He obviously knows I have good taste.)

Our order took a little bit longer than expected to arrive but this is not a Yelp review so I will skip those details. The plates arrived steaming with what we thought was only possible in our dreams. I will also skip the almost animalistic way that we devoured our food in record time and tell you how I felt after.
I felt GREAT! The taste, the aroma! I couldn’t imagine why I would even turn away! Quickly ordering dessert to wrap up our lunch we slowly took in our salted caramel cookies topped with vanilla ice cream while I paid the check. (That reminded me why we don’t go out much, c’mon who thinks its okay to charge that much for food!!)

Time to go; I tried to stand up. Why did I feel so heavy, so gross, so obese!? I was finally able to slide out of the booth and stand up straight. I felt as if I were going to be sick! Walking up to the doors I saw my reflection and instantly felt like a Big Mac, greasy and that I looked better in my pictures.

Making it home the whole time Bailey and I chanted our regrets. Why would we take all of our hard work and ruin it with food that made us feel so bad? You don’t feel like that after you eat a salad or have a good bowl of soup! She told me that she was actually happy it made her feel like a nauseating blimp floating through town because it would be easier to say no the next time. I couldn’t believe the number I saw glowing back at me on my Fitbit calorie counter. All of that, all of it was over 2000 calories just for one meal! ONE I had everything someone should normally eat in a day within an hour! This was crazy.

For the rest of the weekend we ate what we wanted just to get it out of our system, McDonalds, cookies, over eating even healthy food not stopping at the right calorie count. Drinking pop, coffee and juice instead of water. (I’m pretty sure one of the days I didn’t have a drop).

Now tonight we had to weigh in for our second Kickstarter and our first Transformer. I had to force her to come downstairs (teens and their video games… although I’m pretty sure that video game had a boy on the other end she just “likes to talk to”). I also knew deep down she didn’t want to step on the scale for the same reason that I did. We had put on weight, we knew it, there was no way that we didn’t. If you read about the first time I weighed in it’s a magical moment and I really suggest looking at my Journey blog if you’d like to know what types of socks I wear. (I love colorful socks, its an addiction but I’m okay with admitting it).

We both put on 5 pounds. IN A WEEKEND! 5 POUNDS! It took me 4 weeks to lose 8.1 but only a few days to put MOST of that back on. We started to make excuses to justify the numbers that we saw, “we haven’t had our water, its late at night you naturally weigh more at night, we had those burgers and cookies!”
I had to stop talking us both down. No excuse could make up for the fact that its easier to be lazy and put on weight than to get up off the couch away from the computers and hit the gym and eat just a little bit healthier. So now we are planning a trip to the store to stock up on salads healthy treats and oatmeal. This is something we can do; we did it once we can do it again! Wish us luck and feel free to post your advice below we love to read it!

Comment Now!

Linda R.

02/08/2016 3:12PM

That is so great!! Thank you for sharing!

LilyN

02/08/2016 10:40AM

It does get easier as time goes on and try to be forgiving so that each binge is shorter and shorter. Progress, not perfection!

Kailey B.

Thank you! We decided our next reward instead of bad food will be new running shoes and a trip to Malibu to hike in the national park.

02/08/2016 6:56AM

You represent my exact problem! I will eat well and stay active during the work week but then on weekends without the structure I just over indulge and relax too much with a lot of justification thrown in. But the fact of the matter it's way easier to put it on than it is to take it off and that reality doesn't care about any of my excuses.Your success in the last challenge inspires me and I wish you and your daughter tons of success on this one. The 6 month plan hopefully is a path to a true lifestyle adjustment and ability to embrace moderation!

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Kailey B.

Thank you! We have talked it over and decided that at the end of every month if we hit our goal instead of rewarding with bad food we will take trips to a location we want to hike or get new running shoes. Healthy rewards that will keep us going on the right track. I do believe that those who want to make the change will. Even if it is a slow change it is still progress and they have proven time and time again that the slower and steadier you lose the weight the easier it is to keep it off. Avoid the juice cleanse!!

Lynn K.

02/08/2016 6:29AM

I would hazard a guess that if you both stopped with your restaurant visit, you probably would have still gained some weight, but not five pounds. The key is moderation. Sure, you can go have that hamburger, but you need to stop there. The next time you have a wicked craving for something, (and we all know there will be a next time) go ahead and have it, but don't do it every day and pick just one thing. Then you can do a caloric exchange of sorts, like add a couple of miles to your walk, or do 25 more jumping jacks, or eat fewer potatoes.

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Kailey B.

I do believe that if we would have skipped our "reward of bad food" we probably would have had some water weight due to the fact we didnt hit the gym but we are ready for this Transformer! I have read into the calorie exchange and its rather interesting!

RachelDee

02/07/2016 8:11PM

Maybe next time you go out to eat ask for a take home box along with your order and put half your meal in it before eating. I find that even half a restaurant meal is more than sufficient to fill me up. Oh yes, I could write a novel on the dreaded cycle of restrict, binge, regret. Rewarding hard worked off pounds with the food that made me need to lose weight in the first place in quantities that would make a sumo wrestler blush. Sounds about right. Does it ever end? LOL I truly believe that I need to incorporate a little of the things I like into my eating, just in a different way so I don't go crazy on it when I decided I need a "break". I can't keep certain things in the house, because I don't have that kind of willpower yet, but I will allot for going to the store and getting a single serving of something from the "naughty" list once in a while. I will say that I have gotten a lot more picky about what I'm willing to spend the effort to obtain and the calories on. Devil's advocate though, unless you ate 17500 calories above your maintenance level you didn't gain 5 pounds of fat. More like a combo of water retention from sodium bomb foods and weight can fluctuate several pounds between morning and the end of the day with food in your digestive tract. It should level out soon enough when you've been back at it for few days to a week (anything with soy sauce will have my fingers swollen for up to a week) On the flip side, learn from how your body felt after eating and try to

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Kailey B.

Thank you very much. I learned my lesson rather quickly. We just finished clean food shopping and plan to treat ourselves with new running shoes at the end instead of food. Hopefully that makes it easier.