Day 190 - Complete lack of progress

I weighed in this morning at 295.8lbs, meaning I've lost roughly three pounds in two weeks. I know that losing 1.5lbs a week is a solid accomplishment for most dieters, but as has been said many times in this blog, I'm not most dieters. If I'm going to lose weight slowly, then I feel that I should be able to live a lot more normally.

Regardless, I simply cannot deny that my rigor has been lacking, both in what and how much I eat, as well as in exercise. I meet with the doctor at the end of September, and I want to have a few weeks of strict adherence to the diet to base my decisions on when we discuss leaving the diet. There is the possibility that I simply have a floor, and I can't get much below 300lbs on this diet. There is also the possibility that I'm eating more than I think, not working out nearly enough, and thus seeing my weight loss slow.

I've lost 130lbs, and while calorie needs don't scale on a linear fashion, I have far less caloric needs to maintain my weight than I did six months ago. Back in March I could have eaten 2000 calories a day for a month and probably lost 15lbs. Now, my needs are probably closer to 2500-3000 calories and even eating all meat, it's easier to reach that level than you think.

Perhaps the most troubling thing for me is that I'm stress eating. I cooked three pork chops yesterday for brunch, and ate two of them. After class I cooked two more, and them both. Four pork chops weigh in between 24 and 32oz. Add in a jerky stick at school and I was roughly double my calories for the day. It's still under 2000 calories, but at this point nearly any diet I'm on should be under that. The problem isn't so much eating so much meat, it's why I ate so much: I'm stressed about being unemployed, and feeling pretty bad about it, and eating makes me feel better.

It's worrying because it shows that the diet hasn't really helped address the underlying problems I have with food, it simply ignored them. Which is fine, I'd rather lose weight right now than work out why I compulsively eat, but I'm going to have to deal with it at some point. I'm going to try to be more aware, and do all the standard cliches they recommend: replacing food with exercise, and thinking about eat bite, etc.

I hope to put up a few good weeks on the diet this month. If do it, and lose weight quickly again, than I'll know that I need to stay on. If I'm still stalled out, than I think it's time to make my peace with who I am. If I simply can't stay strictly on it... well, than I think I cycle off gracefully, take a break, and launch back into it after a few months.