Gained, not lost. Let’s just be clear on that. For how lovely it would be if I were writing about how I had lost three pounds in three days (lovely but maybe not healthy?), but no… it’s the opposite. Which also cannot be that healthy.
I was away this past weekend, and I decided that for the three days I was gone, I would be thoughtful and moderate but within that context eat and drink as I pleased. Here’s why I decided to give myself an exception: It was my bachelorette weekend, and I’m only planning to have one those. Because I don’t drink much anymore, I decided I didn’t want to have a traditional bachelorette party. I’m not really so much into da club anymore. Or even crowded bars. It turns out, for me, they are less charming and fun when sober. So instead, a few close friends and I went away to the desert for the weekend; it was wonderful and exactly right for me.
And I did drink. Because you know… bachelorette. The first night, I had a glass of wine in the hot tub. I started a second but realized it was making me feel drowsy and out of it, and I wanted to be present for the evening, to enjoy everything going on. The second night, I had two drinks again. Same deal: a glass of wine followed by a second glass that I realized was making me feel less than fabulous. I had another half a glass at the end of the evening though, back at the house where we were all staying, so it ended up being 2 full glasses. So between three and four glasses of wine for the whole weekend. Not bad considering that two short years ago, three to four glasses of wine would have been my average for a casual night.
As for eating, our meals were mostly heathly: a salad for lunch and homemade tacos with chorizo the first night, eggs with leftover taco stuff for breakfast in the morning, a picnic lunch on a hike, and vegan pancakes and turkey bacon the final morning. We ate dinner out on Friday night at a barbecue place, and I ordered chicken with vegetables. The less healthy food came in the snacking.
Again, it wasn’t the worst food in the world, we weren’t driving through Taco Bell or seeing who could fit the most (recently discontinued) Sno Balls in their mouths at once. But there was dark chocolate, and I did eat it. Here, in sum, is the list of foods I normally wouldn’t eat that I enjoyed over the weekend:
dark chocolate almond bark
dark chocolate covered ginger
dark chocolate covered pomegranate seeds (I clearly like dark chocolate…)
corn chips with salsa
mini-cupcakes from a bakery that makes sugar, gluten, and dairy free desserts
mini-cookies from that same bakery
a few steak fries
a peanut butter and honey sandwich on Ezekiel bread during the hike
root vegetable chips
two eggs with yolks
And…I think that’s it. Not a long list at all really. I definitely ate of these foods liberally, particularly the chocolate-covered ginger. But I figured it was one weekend and a celebration at that.
I weighed myself on Friday before leaving town and again on Monday, the morning after I returned. My weight was up by 3.4 pounds. 3.4! In three days! That’s craziness. And also a very clear sign of just how sensitive my body is to sugar mostly, but also to food it just doesn’t need. It’s no wonder I gained weight consistently for years. I ate much more poorly than I did over the past weekend all the time. And I consumed fewer beneficial nutrients too. My body clearly had no capacity to manage all the excess sugar and carbs and refined crap I was giving it. So it held on. Apparently, that’s all it knows to do.
None of us should eat crap food, no matter our weight because it’s still crap and it’s going into our bodies. Some people are able to process that crap better than others. (Side note: I’m not saying the food I ate over the weekend was crap – it was mostly pretty good in the grand scheme of things, but some of it was, you know… pretty iffy in quantity.) I am not one of those people. My body can’t handle it well. Experiments like this past weekend are good reminders of that.
I weighed myself again this morning, and after just one day of clean eating, I’d dropped one of those extra pounds, so I’m hoping by the end of the week I will have stabilized. I know it’s not good to go up and down with my weight, so I’m hoping that keeping it within a week will make it more of an aberration than real weight I’ve gained. And I will say for just three days and not as a way of behaving regularly, but as a special treat… it was worth it.
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