Weekly Weigh-in: 4

Yet again, this week was a disappointment.  I gained 1 pound this week; I only made it to the gym 3 times and I just kept reaching for the sugar time and time again.  I believe I had reached a plateau in my diet and I need to rethink how I am making decisions.  Reaching a plateau is normal during a diet.  It is a result of your body needing fewer calories because now there is less of you.  For me, there is 10 pounds less so I need to reduce my calorie intake a little bit and kick up the exercising to where I was before. 

 

When I started my diet it was very simple: grains with breakfast and none the rest of the day.  Sometimes I cheated a little bit but at the end of the day I was eating way less grains and as a result consuming fewer calories.  I did not feel hungry as a matter of fact I was comfortable most of the time.  Now I need to gear it up a bit.  And in my struggle to do so, I have come to realized how dependent I am on sweets.  The next step needs to be phasing out sweets. I did it at the beginning but then I started eating more than one a day.  So now I need to change that to no sweets, only once a week.  Oh, and Starbucks released that new Vanilla Spice Latte and I love it.  I will have to go back to my plain Café Latte if I intend to lose any more weight.  I fell of track, but now I am back on again.  Next week will be better.

It is important now to discuss food addictions.  The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) published an article about this very topic in May 2012.  According to recent studies, the human brain reacts to sweet foods the same way it does to addictive drugs, but on a smaller scale.  The happy sensation people get from eating sweet foods will trigger a person to want even more.  When a person overeats it intensifies the reaction, so next time a person needs more to experience the same euphoria just as a drug addict slowly needs more and more drugs to reach the same high.  The reaction to sweet food is not as intense as what drug users experience but the effect is there making us come back for more and more.  I see this in myself and I must take this into consideration and remind myself that I do not need the sugar, my brain is craving it.  It will take time to overcome this but if I recognize it for what it is, may be it will make the process easier.