I'm going to keep trying this approach for a week or two regardless -- I'm kind of tired of counting calories when I've been doing that off and on for four years or so -- and I'll see if it has any impact on what I weigh. But so far I don't like this approach that much because I also don't like how it makes me feel; I spend a lot of time feeling hungry, and I've had headaches the last two days (though I can't tell if that's from low blood sugar or because I drank some green tea on Thursday -- I know that's supposed to be such a lovely, healthy kind of tea, but over the past two months I've noticed that ANY caffeinated drink is leading to a headache the next day for me). I'm also tired, but I can't tell if my overall tiredness is diet-related or circumstance-related; tomorrow I will eat more freely, and then after that I have a normal week (i.e., no birthday parties, days full of school, and my usually scheduled exercise) so I'll see if the headaches and fatigue persist or not.
I ended up not getting exercise last night because the party prep kept me going until late. I was well over 7000 steps for the day; a normal day for me would be 2-4000 without exercise, so at least I didn't have a lazy day.
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Well, the one thing I have learned from years of seeing Rebecca is that denial is the WORST form of dieting. That and ignoring the signals of your body. If you feel hungry and ignore it your body learns bad habits. Hard to break ones. I would do fasting differently. Can you plot out your food for the day but then instead of eating it at pre-designated times eat it when your body asks for it?
If I plot out my food for the day, then I'm back to calorie-counting, which is what I didn't want to do. I wanted to try the not-eating-between-meals trick because it's easy to implement and it's something different. And it seemed like a nice tie-in to Lent.
Plus, I've learned from previous diets that sometimes hunger is just my body telling me it's USED to being fed too much so it's demanding what it is accustomed to. I don't mind the hunger so much, because that fades -- any cutback in calories is going to leave you feeling a bit hungry once in a while, but when you adjust, you're not hungry all the time and not so determined to overeat when you get food in front of you. So while I don't like being hungry, I can live with that and get past it. SOME kind of denial is crucial to dieting -- you have to increase your metabolism (calories out) or decrease your intake, or both, to burn more calories than you take in. That doesn't mean starvation or even hunger necessarily, but it does mean some kind of denial -- of a type of food, or of a quantity of food, or of rest/laziness.
What I *don't* think is healthy is feeling tired and headachy. And I can't measure whether how I felt this week was a result of the diet or the week. I started my fasting with a FULL fast, for Ash Wednesday -- all day without food except for a light dinner (and herbal tea and water throughout the day), as I've done in past years without a problem. And that didn't count as dieting. But then I went the next three days without food between meals, and in the meantime I was running around like a chicken with her head cut off and not getting to bed on time. And I drank that green tea, which is another unusual factor. So this coming week I have to try again without the snacking between meals, only coming off a day of full eating, with my normal sleeping and work habits back in place (I hope), and I won't try any teas with even a hint of caffeine in them all week, and we'll see how I do. If I still feel like crap all week, I'll go back to the calorie counting and meal planning -- I just didn't want to have to mess with that.
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