The one where I have an epiphany

*Trigger warning - contains talk of actual periods *gasp* I know! I won't ever use the term 'star week' because it was coined to indulge men, who, if they had to endure even just one period, would be whining about it for all eternity. And if we women tried to fluffy it up by calling something ridiculous, they would insist on having it referred to in the correct way. Star week, my arse. Anyhoo, I digress.

*General warning - this is a long, boring, technical post. If you've happened upon it and you've hit some kind of weight loss plateau, read on, it may help. If not, click onto the next post, which will have nice pictures of yummy food. Seriously, this will be about ten minutes of your life you will never get back.

I haven't posted for four whole weeks. I have been struggling with SW. Really struggling too. We did our SAS logs, and as I posted, we had some (minor in my case, very bloody minor) success with these, taking my weight loss back down to 5 stone 7 lb - what I was two days before Christmas.

Now, in the four following weigh ins I have:
Lost 3 lb
Gained 1.5 lb
Lost 1.5 lb
Gained 1.5 lb

This means that as of Monday, a full eight weeks after getting my five and a half stone award, I am only 1.5 lb lighter. Which isn't good enough for me. It's not good enough. I'm cycling the same few pounds. I know weight loss slows down as you get lighter, but I'm nowhere near light enough for this yet. I am still what the NHS calls obese? I'm not even overweight yet. I have to lose another eighteen pounds before I get that dubious honour!

Week on week, I am investing:
a) a hell of a lot of money; the cost of the class, the cost of the food, I don't care what anyone says, it costs money to eat healthy!

b) a hell of a lot of my physical time; prepping healthy meals, cooking healthy meals, batch cooking healthy meals and yes, even the cleaning up after these meals. It's a lot easier, quicker and tidier shoving a pizza in the oven or a pie in the microwave. And cheaper.

c) a hell of a lot of my mental time; calculating the syn values for not only one person but two, sourcing new and tasty meals for us, because the last thing I need on any eating plan is boredom. Meal planning. Making sure that those meal plans don't take us over any healthy extra allowances. Checking ahead when Mr G is working, and making sure those meals are enough to sustain him through a night shift. Planning food for when we are going out somewhere, making sure that we have access to on-plan food, checking menus of different establishments, making sure we have a healthy meal to hand when we get home.

It is mentally exhausting me. And my reward for that, over the course of the last eight weeks, is one and a half measly pounds.

So, do I give up now? Do I throw in the towel? No. Not happening. What a travesty that would be, after all my hard work since April.

Because I know this plan works. It's not the SW plan that needs to change, I am clearly doing something wrong. Something that doesn't suit me. And I needed to find out what that was. And this is where the ASD comes in handy. Because I like lists. And facts. And figures. And it means that when things do go tits up, I can look back, in this case on forty six weeks worth of facts, figures, weights and meals eaten.

Now, I know that I deserve a better weight loss than this. I don't drink alcohol. I don't eat cake. I don't have a takeaway every Saturday. I don't eat pastry. I don't have a cheat meal (or a cheat day) after weigh in - one of the specific reasons I chose a Monday morning group. I was more inclined to behave on a weekend. And it works. So, when you see SW's (mythical) Sandra going on about all these things and coming in with a five pound loss (thankfully we don't have one in our group, but you see them online all the time) then it does really piss you off. 'Just been weighed! Lost four pounds, and I really thought I would gain this week as I drank a litre bottle of gin both weekend nights and ate a twin pack of steak and ale pies and a family slab of Galaxy!' You can't help but start thinking, well, maybe I need to do this? Maybe I need to start drinking once a week. Maybe I need a cheat meal after weigh in?

And I really, really don't want to start going down that route. Because I'm not doing this just to lose weight. I'm doing this for my health as well? My father has had a heart attack. Both parents have type 2 diabetes.

So, the epiphany.

1) When was I disappointed?

I have had eight weigh ins where I have had either a gain or a maintain.
One of these was Christmas.
A further two were mystery gains - including this Monday.
So, what of the other five?

Four of these gains were followed within the next week by my period.
The fifth gain... is when my period should have been due.

I haven't had a period since the 11th of January. This is key information.

2) What am I doing so differently now, that I wasn't doing at the start?

a) Breakfast

b) Lunch

So. It turns out that Mrs-I-Don't-Eat-Breakfast actually did eat breakfast right at the start. You know how you do, when you immerse yourself in a new plan, you do what you should. Three meals a day. I mainly had fat free greek yogurt and berries. This has tailed off over the months, to... a banana. At some point during the morning. When I'm hungry and I'm about to hit the Kit Kats.

Lunch. I always ate lunch. Always, always, always. It's not my most inspiring of mealtimes, on an endless loop of homemade soup, beans and egg on toast, beans on jacket potato or omelette. But I always had lunch.

And now? Since Mr G started his new job, sometimes I don't. Especially when Mr G is on shift, and he's in bed, I don't bother making lunch for myself. Or he might get up at four in the afternoon and it's too late for both of us to eat when our tea will be getting dished up within the next two hours. He might have a banana or an apple to tide him over.

So essentially? Quite a lot of the time, both Mr G and I, not just me, are surviving on:
One very healthy meal a day
A banana
Our Healthy Extras
and up to fifteen (twenty) syns

3) Where is my bloody period?

I am in perimenopause, have been for two years now. My cycle is erratic, to say the least. I can have three periods a month or I can go for nearly six weeks without. This gap, however, is the longest. Forty days. So, what is the correlation here?

So, I Google. Good old Google. Can eating too little cause your period to stop.

And guess what. Yes, yes it can. In a nutshell:

'If you don’t eat enough, your hypothalamus thinks you’re in a famine and makes the very smart and adaptive decision to not try to make a baby.'

a) Thank God for that!

b) So, starvation mode, something that I am actually verra, verra cynical about, might actually be real?

Also causes constipation - check. Hair loss - check. Insomnia - check.

Well, bugger me. So, this week I am putting the theory to the test. I bought both myself and Mr G a meal planning journal from Home Bargains the other week, and we started them on Monday.

I have eaten three meals a day.
I haven't gone over my syns.
I have increased my speed foods.
I have measured and weighed my Healthy Extras.
I have increased my water (as actual water, not coffee) intake - something else which has dropped off recently.
Mr G has had breakfast when he comes in from work, so even if he misses lunch, he hasn't then missed two meals that day.

I haven't been following the plan. Eating one meal a day isn't following the plan, even if that meal is on plan.

What is the Spam for? Well, every stone that we've lost from 2 stone onwards, we have rewarded ourselves with a food treat. Something we have given up completely for the sake of our weight loss. One meal, and the rest of the day and week on plan. And we were both very partial to a Spam bap. So, the Spam is Six Stone Incentive Spam.

That is my epiphany, this is my theory. We will both have to wait until Monday weigh in to see if I have hit the nail on the head. But I have a feeling in my waters that I am right about this one.

*UPDATE 21/02
Period has finally arrived. So this quite likely explains Monday's unwarranted weight gain, following the path of previous gains.

Whether its arrival has anything to do with me now hopefully being out of famine mode, I will never know for sure?

However - what I can say is that on my own scales at home? I am down 1.7 kg on Monday morning. I am now in the 70 something kilogram bracket. And I do know that I haven't replicated that kind of weight loss in an entire week only eating one meal and a piece of fruit. This is only four days. I know a lot can happen between now and then, but I'm hopeful for a good loss at Monday's weigh in.