Today I totally sabotaged myself again when it comes to reaching my goal weight of 63 kilograms. I’m currently about 3 kilograms away from that (or maybe more or less, haven’t weighed myself in a couple of weeks).

The last weeks I have been super busy with my schoolwork and been stressing about it constantly. I have an important exam coming up next Thursday so I’ve been spending hours and hours at the library with my study materials. Don’t get me wrong: I love economics and the subject of international economics is very interesting and all but it’s stressful to know that this exam result will determine some of my financing next semester and also my possibilities of getting my diploma cum laude. My sleep quality has also been really bad due to stress (I always sleep bad when under stress).

So today I came home from the library and had a nice bowl of soup. But somehow I felt I needed something more. I ate 25 grams of hazelnuts, still didn’t feel full… Waited a little bit and ate another 25 grams. I was over my caloric goal of 1600 kcal. 

But somehow I still felt I needed something more. I remembered I had a bar of 70% chocolate. 

Bad idea to keep chocolate at home.

In short, I ate the whole bar which was 100 grams. What the hell, Margit?! You weren’t that hungry. Extra 538 kcal and 33 grams of carbs of which about 25 grams was sugar. Not good, not good at all. It wasn’t an absolute fail or cheat meal… A bar of milk chocolate at 60 grams of carbs would have been a far worse choice.

But still: I’m also a normal person that fails to make great choices sometimes. Sometimes I want something sweet and give in. It doesn’t happen very often, in fact things like that haven’t really happened to me at all, only 2 (or 3) times before (I wrote about cravings in this post).

Well, at least now I won’t be craving or buying any dark chocolate until Christmas when I need it for cooking purposes.

Another topic I want to address in this post is my so-called caloric goal. I’m beginning to think that the 1600 kcal might be a little bit unrealistic and too low when considering the basic metabolic rate and my activity levels. Recently my workouts have jumped from 5 times a week to 6 or even 7 times a week. I feel like I’m hungrier because of that. But maybe it’s just in my head and I actually don’t need more food? I don’t know anymore. I’m confused. 

Here’s my caloric intake day by day in November:

The pink line is my current goal of 1600 kcal. As you can see, I haven’t really reached that: I’ve been around that mark only on 5 days out of 30. My average for the month was 1781 kcal (the green line). I was around that on 20 days. 

There were 3 really low days when I just wasn’t that hungry. But there were also 2 really bad days: my granny’s birthday party (low carb but high on calories) and today, the 30th of November when the overeating on dark chocolate and nuts happened. 

But you know what? 

I’m not going to stress about those 2 days. As two days of good eating won’t make you fit, 2 days of overeating won’t make me fat also!

The moment of truth will be next Saturday when I step on the scales and measure myself in a long time. That will tell me if I need to change my diet plan somehow or if I’m fine as is.

I’m also kind of scared for December and January in general. Obviously the last week will be Christmas and New Years celebrations. I’m planning to stick to my low carb and create some pretty awesome low carb recipes (they will be on my blog too, don’t you worry!). For almost 3 weeks in January I will be travelling in a rather exotic destination and that will probably result in eating local foods that aren’t that low carb. So that’s going to be a major setback in my weightloss journey. But I think you should embrace the culture and the food while travelling and worry about your weight later. No, I won’t be stuffing my face with bread, rice and sugar all day every day but I will be eating 2–3 meals a day of local foods that are higher carb then I’m used to (like fruit).

Overall I think I need to maintain a positive outlook and a good mood. Enjoy travelling and enjoy the holidays. I will get to all my goals eventually, I have no doubt in that!