Rubriik: Vead

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!

Here’s a confession: I’m a total nut and seed addict. Hazelnuts, almonds, brazil nuts, peanuts (yes, I know that botanically they are legumes), sunflower seeds, flax seeds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, pecans, coconut… You name it. I have so much troubles with MODERATION when it comes to nuts and seeds. And don’t even get me started on nut butters!

If I open a packet of nuts, I will want to finish it because nuts to me are like addictive drugs (not that I have tried those, I haven’t and won’t!) or potato chips to other people… I just keep eating until I finish the packet. No matter if it is 50 grams of 500 grams. But that much nuts or seeds is way too much carbs and also pushing calories too high. 

So how do you deal with this kind of problem?

Solution #1. Don’t buy nuts or seeds.

The “if you have good food in your fridge, you will eat only good food” rule applies here as well. If you don’t have nuts or seeds at home/office, you can’t overeat on them. As simple as that. That solution obviously works the best. Then, occasionally if you feel like eating them, go buy a 50 or 100 grams packet and enjoy it all at once if you feel like it. It for sure is a passive solution because it actually doesn’t fix your overeating problem. But hey: it works.

Solution #2. Buy nuts but divide them into reasonable servings immediately.

This actually works for me. I buy nuts and then divide them into 10/20/30 gram packages. Now if I take that packet and finish it, it’s OK because it’s nicely moderated. 30 grams of nuts isn’t overeating in my case. No guilt feelings or too much carbs or energy. Problem: fixed!

Solution #3. Buy nuts and seeds but only in minipackages.

Kind of the same point as the last one. I unfortunately have failed to find really small packages like 30 gram ones they have in some other countries in Estonia. And the price per kilogram with 50 gram packages is just ridicolously high.

Solution #4. Grow some character/fortitude/self control.

I’m still working on that (giggles). Sometimes I even succeed. For example: some months ago when I had a jar of nut butter at my house, it wouldn’t survive more than 3 days; now it lasts me about a week. That’s improvement but I still can’t only take one teaspoon at a time, I eat more. Also, having nut or seed butter at my house makes me want to snack on it constantly. Not good! I need to grow more character.

If you want more nutrition information about nuts and seeds, check this post I posted some time ago.