Another Juice Fast

Hey there.  Yep.  It's me.  It's been a while.  I've totally neglected this blog.  I think I might need to do some kind of a revamp over here.  I need this space to have a different feel so that I can get back to wanting to write here more often.  Still thinking about it.

The bad news is that as expected I gained the majority of the weight back after my juice fast.  I may have kept 2 pounds off but it's really hard to tell for sure because my weight fluctuates so much with water weight.  It drives me nuts.  The good news is that I'm on another juice fast that started today.  This time I'm only doing 3 days and then clean eating and low carb for 2 days to see if it might be possible to hold onto a shred of weight loss. So why am I doing it again if it pretty much didn't work the first time?  I guess it's because what happened is exactly what I anticipated.  I didn't expect any different and doing juice fasts right is mainly about giving my body a break from food which apparently I am addicted to.  Right now it's the best way for me to guarantee X amount of days of clean eating.  Maybe I can start "training" myself to have more control while eating.  Other then that I'm battling cravings and mostly failing to stay under 1k.  Lately I'm having a lot more 1,200 days.  Whoa.

The juice fast happens to fall during my cardio week.  I'm going to do an hour of cardio today and see how I feel tomorrow.  If I have to cut it to 30 minutes tomorrow of cardio and maybe 30 minutes of something less vigorous then so be it but my goal is to get in two work outs even though I'm on juice.  I'm really hungry right now.  I'm really tired.  It's going to be rough getting through the rest of today but I'm hoping tomorrow will be better and then by Wednesday night I can snack on Almonds, cheese or some dry Fiber one cereal.  It's still a "good" snack for me because it's low cal but has tons of fiber and is enriched with vitamins.  Thursday and Friday I want to do clean and no obvious carbs all day and salads for dinner.  Only clean snacks after if I want anything else. This means no Fat Free Pringles, Bread, Pasta, Granola Bar type foods or crackers. 

I haven't been terrible by most normal people's standards but good solid restricting does not happen on most days.  My snacking is getting the best of me a lot and I say to hell with it way more then I used to.  Take yesterday for example.  We went out for Mexican food.  I restricted up until that meal then I wanted the cheesy enchilada so that's what I got.  I could have had the mini street tacos which would have been the lower calorie option but I said to hell with it and got what I wanted to.  Why?  Because over the last few months I'm finding that it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference.  My body is refusing weight loss right now anyways.  It's tired of being deprived.  It's stubborn.  My metabolism is screwed.  My eating is screwed.  I'm too old.  Whatever.  But all I know is that the only significant amount of weight loss I've had over the last year or so is when I gave up food for my juice fast for 5 days and after which I promptly gained most of it back.  Consistency is hard to maintain.  Between the dining out and social outings I find it so hard to focus and get back on track that I don't try nearly as hard as I used to between outings or even at social outings.  It doesn't make a difference either way.

The funny thing is that it's literally only about 5-7 lbs that I would like to lose in order to feel better about myself.  The thing is that I cannot do it.  It's just not happening.  The only good thing is that so far no matter what I've done I've not gone over 122.6.  I guess that's sort of my high weight and I'm still cautiously optimistic about whether or not that's true. It's not a weight that I like or that I'm proud of in any way but I am glad that it's not gone higher.  I find it very embarrassing to struggle to maintain under 120 when I used to be 112-114 lbs.  It's the weirdest mind thing because there is so much about my body that still says skinny girl even though I'm heavier.  I still have the thigh gap.  The veiny arms, chest plate bones and bony shoulders are still there.  I went shopping a few weekends ago and fit into a size 25/0 at Banana Republic in skinny jeans.  Granted that's mostly due to vanity sizing I'm sure but still no fat girl will fit into those jeans.  I'm getting mixed signals.  The scales tells me I'm fat as ever but certain parts about my body say otherwise.  It is those certain parts that keeps me sane.  Even the fact that a lot of my pants fit tighter hasn't ruined me as much as I thought it would because I still have my precious thigh gap.

I've been shopping like crazy.  I did take a break and did good for a while but it started up again in April and May.  I'm still not in debt.  I'm still paying my savings and my bills every month with room to spare but it just feels like an excessive wasteful way to be spending so much money.  On the one hand I'm glad I've done it because I've really improved my wardrobe a lot.  Getting dressed is easier and funner.  On the other hand I could have saved  MORE money if I had not spent it on clothes.  I have two trips coming up back to back so it really needs to stop now.  I find that I do pretty good at cutting myself off when I know I have no choice.

Work craziness has died down a bit.  My goodness it was getting really bad for a while but we just had our last big meeting last week.  The deadlines are done but there is still a lot of work to do and catch up on.