"I am a self-confessed emotional eater and complete chocaholic and yet I've lost nearly 8 stone (if I can do it - anyone can!!!). When things in life are going well, my desire to eat chocolate and other bad stuff just goes - and if anything, I crave good, nutritious, healthy foods. During these times I lose weight. However, when life is difficult, as it has been for me over the past 2-3 months (work pressures), I utterly crave chocolate. Over the past 2-3 months I have regularly (i.e. every 2-3 days) binged on chocolate. By that, I mean, I've gone out and bought 6-7 bars of chocolate and eaten my way through all of them in an evening. On top of that I've eaten cheese sandwiches (cheese comes second to chocolate in my head), muffins, iced buns and all sorts of other rubbish.
HOWEVER (this is the good bit) - during these times I have NOT GAINED any weight! This is because:
- My metabolism has speeded up because I've lost weight so my body uses calories more effectively,
- I do more exercise (though nothing like as much as I do when life is going well),
- The portion sizes of my main meals is much smaller than it ever used to be - because of the band,
- In between the bad days I have relatively good days where I have a negative calorie balance (i.e. I use more than I put in).
So, if you still find you can't keep off the chocolate (and incidentally, I never keep any in the house), it's not all doom and gloom - stick to good eating habits as much as you can and this should mean that at least you won't gain any more weight. On good days, and at good times in your life, you should be able to lose with the band - and keep it off during the bad times".
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Hi Theresa,
ReplyDeleteI have a question about metabolism, so maybe I am not clear - please understand I am just "typing aloud", so if I am wrong, please please correct me. My understanding was that as we loose weight, we require less calories to maintain - a 300 lb woman needs say, 3500 calories to maintain her weight, but a 200 lb woman only needs 2500 calories to maintain her weight - I made up these numbers, just for an example. So I was confused by your point above. How do you start to use calories more effectively? You obviously must be doing something right, as amazing results! I am just curious are we talking about the same thing?