Steady as she goes

I've been doing remarkably well on this low carb diet. I'm coming up on the 2 week mark and I haven't wavered once. I've lost a fair amount of weight. I'm not feeling too deprived, and I've been exercising pretty good restraint. I'm starting to feel like this is a diet that could stick (with some modifications - I resent not being able to eat legumes, and I don't intend to forego pasta entirely for the next 6 months to a year - that's just crazy talk).  So I'm feeling a little tentative optimism, the problem being, I've been here loads of times before only to prove myself wrong. I go weeks, occasionally even months of commitment and steady progress, only to trip up, lapse, and gain everything back. This often comes after a big even like a holiday, which is why I'm viewing my upcoming trip to Japan with more trepidation than excitement. Never easy to diet on a holiday, and the land of rice and ramen isn't exactly designed for low carb living. I'll have to travel for work next month also, which I'm already feeling anxious about.

I tried on the dress I'm planning to wear to the wedding and it zipped up this time - but actually, I think it was just a question of awkwardly trying to do a zip up myself that prevented it fitting last time. It's wearable, but not great - which is pretty much the deal with most of my clothes. God, I remember when I used to enjoy clothes and feel great about something I was wearing - I'd love to get those days back and bloody appreciate my figure rather than constantly trying to make it better.

Buoyed by the loss on the scale and the aforementioned deceptive zip success, I tried on some of my other clothes - not in a smaller size, mind, but the size 18s and 16s in my usual rotation that had been feeling a tad snug. Turns out, they're still snug. Pride goeth before a fall indeed. Ridiculous of me to think that 11 days of dieting would magically shrink me, but now I feel quite downcast and disheartened, beyond all rationality.

Tomorrow is lunch out, which I shall have to negotiate as best I can. Apart from that, just keep plodding along and hoping for the best, I suppose.

EDIT: Oh god, I just tried on more clothes. What on earth is wrong with me? I now know that a dress I wore in March is MUCH tighter than it was then. This news is in no way helpful, and has just made me even more miserable. I think I have to put a moratorium on clothes trying-on until at least the beginning of August.

Current status: obsessed

I've become quite fixated on this low carb diet I'm doing. There seems to be a stage on every diet where I become absolutely obsessed with reading everything I can about it, reading online forums, planning meals, and calculating my potential weight loss. It's like I'm completely uninterested in anything else, which has made it fairly easy to stay on plan, but I'm also worried it will burn itself out too quickly.

We also have to go out for lunch on Saturday at a meat based restaurant (good for the diet) at their "endless French fries" brunch (not good for the diet). Hopefully I'll be strong enough to refuse. Part of my anxiety about refusing, to be honest, is the scrutiny it will inevitably draw from my dining companions. I HATE disclosing to people I'm on a diet. The idea that someone knows I want to lose weight is horrifying to me. The idea that I will lose weight is, although welcome, in some ways also terrifying because then PEOPLE MIGHT NOTICE IT. Honestly, that idea makes me shudder. I do desperately want to lose a significant amount of weight, but I want everyone around me not to notice it happen. Too much to ask?

Low carbing it

So, I did not do well at all while in Singapore. Something about travelling - even the airport/plane trip part of it - seems to lead to uncontrolled eating, or at the least absolute inability to even roughly stick to a plan. When I got home late Monday night instead of just going to bed like a normal person, I did the whole "you've blown it anyway so why not go out with a bang" binge, consisting of giant bowl of ice cream and a huge bag of chips. Idiot!

With the wedding trip just two weeks away, and my planned dresses not even zipping up, I am in dire straits. I'm planning to do a combo of 5:2 and low carb, which has been working ok so far (for 3 whole days! My goodness, what willpower!). On the non fast days (I refuse to call them feast days because, I mean come on) I'm trying to stick to 1200 calories (although I got to 1300 today - there's that amazing willpower again!)

I don't think I could maintain this long term - I love carbs, and 1200 feels a little too restrictive, but maybe just for 2 weeks I can manage? I've been googling weight loss constantly and came upon the idea of a fat fast - low carb but with a hellish twist, where you eat 1000 calories a day but 80-90% of that has to come from fat. The idea is it shoves you quickly into ketosis and your body becomes super efficient at using fat for fuel, and it's supposedly good for people with very slow metabolisms. Sounds pretty awful but maybe doable for a few days - if I were convinced it actually worked scientifically. I haven't read convincing enough proof - so the search for the miracle cure continues.

I used Seren's tip and changed my scales to pounds so I would have a less clear idea of where I was, weight wise, but then when I was putting it into some bullshit weight loss calculator thing online it did an instant conversion and I was mildly horrified with what I saw. I was headed back to my highest recorded weight ever, which is just beyond demoralising and mortifying. Anyway, I'm weighing myself again on Saturday, and we'll see how I go.