Recently the office threw a surprise wedding party for a coworker and there was a beautiful chocolate cake with whipped icing fashioned in the wedding color scheme. The icing had a stunning diamond ring motif made of more icing and the pale lavender and purple whipped icing was a gorgeous contrast to the dark chocolate once the cake.

The hostess who coordinated the party was cutting and dispensing out slices of cake. Everyone had taken their appropriated slice and there were 2 left. She started to hand me a plate and I said “no thank you” with a smile. Her eyes got wide and asked “Whhyy?”and I respond with another smile.

A coworker sitting next to me gave me a sheepish look and said, “you’re being so good.”

I looked back at her nonchalantly and said, “it’s not about being good or bad.”

“It’s about the decisions that you make,” she interjected proudly before continuing.

“And I am making a very different decision from you” she finished just before she shoves a particular large bite of cake in her mouth.

What I really wanted to explain to her was that the truth of the matter is that I simply didn’t want to eat a piece a cake at that particular moment. ‘Didn’t want’ not as in I craved it and was purposely overcoming my urges and denying myself. No. ‘Didn’t want’ as in I genuinely had no desire, zero, zilch, nada. A notion which I am increasingly discovering is something so incredibly foreign that I may as well trying to explain the time continuum string theory. Many are simply unable to comprehend the concept of not ‘wanting’ to eat cake and actually mean it, much less accept.

And I was fully aware that when I turned down the piece of cake that my decision made many of the ladies very uncomfortable. I can see them rolling their eyes at me, some internally, some out right and that is okay. I refuse to be pressured to eat something when I have no desire for it. Random, frequent, forced social eating is one of the many habits which can easily lead me back to being obese. And their visual uncomfortableness is not really a reflection on me, personally. No. Their uncomfortableness resonates from their displeasure with their own choices but cleverly deflected on to me. I am okay with that too.  

I am constantly frustrated with people’s misguided definition of what healthy living. healthy eating, healthy choices are. There seem to be a disconnect between the widely ill conceived truth from the actual reality. I think it is fairly common for people to think healthy = 100% compliance 100% of the time 0% indulgence. But the reality is if anyone only commits to healthy choices at 75% of the time, it would still make an impact on their overall health. A concept which alludes many, while most refuse to acknowledge operating under the ‘all or nothing’ mentality. Which is a real shame.

I also wanted to thank everyone who shared in my momentous 1000-day MFP milestone. I have been oddly quiet because to be quite frank I was internally having mini panic attacks of failure and reverting back to 3 years ago.

As I have mentioned, my recent food experiment was an epic fail and it took me about 3 weeks to fully resolve the issues from it  and feel better. It was one of my worse experiment failures to date. So here’s what happened and forgive me of violating TMI rule but I hope it will help others.

Since I have lost the weight and started to concentrate more on strength training, I have habitually been heavy on my proteins as all hours of research suggests (macros: F 30 C 30 P 40). However, the additional portions protein was causing some severe constipation where I have had to resort to using a laxative once or sometimes twice a week. I knew laxatives were very harsh on the system so I did more research for other alternatives. Many suggest the first step is try to introduce more fiber through real foods. But since I have FODMAP sensitivity I am limited to what I can implement into my eating repertoire that is high in fiber. I literally consume as much vegetables at lunch and dinner in hopes for a natural remedy but It did nothing. So fiber supplements was the next recommended approach to try this is where the downward spiral started.

Without considering my own height & weight or additional research I simply dived in head first and took 2 gummy supplements at one time (according to the directions on the bottle). The very next day I was so ungodly uncomfortably bloated that I was literally busting out of my jeans! I decided to split the dose to one in the morning and one at night – still felt like I was a gazillion pounds. Then I cut the gummies into quarters and took one quarter in the morning and one at night. I didn’t feel worse but I certainly didn’t feel better. I did this for about a week or trying to ‘tough it out’ because it did provide the relief I was seeking otherwise. But after the scale tipped passed my ‘caution’ weight I decided that it was not working for me.

SO I stopped the fiber supplements and adopted a somewhat vegetarian eating regimen. Instead of my standard 8 oz or chicken or pork for dinner, I opted for salmon or tuna. I reduced my onion (FODMAP) consumption to about ¼ of what it was and concentrated on eating very clean for 2 weeks – no snacks, no extra carbs, clean.

I finally dropped back down to my usual weight range and I felt SO much better. All my clothes fit comfortably around the waist again and I have only recently started to snack again but very very cautiously.

It was a terrifying experience because when I see that number on the scale I had to consciously fight my panic instinct to cut calories. It is very different to understand intellectually that the weight was not fat weight but water weight and be aware that emotionally the oompa loompa sometimes can still try to hijack logic.

Moral of the story is, if you need extra fiber try natural ingredients first. If you have to go to a supplement, start slow – do NOT boom – take the full dose all at once to begin with. And only as a last resort go to a laxative.