The Fat Loss TroubleshootThis is your place to troubleshoot your fat loss problems from nutrition to training. This section is led by Leigh Peele, author of "The Fat Loss Troubleshoot," the ultimate fat loss manual. If your results have slowed or stalled this is the place to come for advice for all your fat loss needs.
I am in REPAIR Stage 2/Eat, and I am still supposed to be resting. Last night I went to bed AGAIN at 3am. Surfing the web, sending emails, doing some art... So another night of 5 hours' sleep. My REPAIR has been the occasional 8 hours, mostly 7, but lots of 5 and 6 hours... NOT ENOUGH Sleep!!
The Ah Ha moment: I finish a whole day of wonderful 1 item / combo meals, great food, hit my calories, hit my macros. Then at the last moment, I go to sleep too late and sabotage my results.
This is very familiar to me: I used to either sabotage the day by a late night snack of 2 ounces of nuts or 2T of peanut butter, or bread and butter. If I cleaned up the kitchen, I could do the little tiny overeat on cheese or dried cranberries or almonds. Whatever is left in the house.
Or I do a great week, it is Saturday or Sunday, end of week, and I 'blow the whole week's deficit' with 1 meal or 2 candy bars or some self-sabotage...
I worked around that by doing Eat Stop Eat which allowed for the occasional overeat moment.
But I see it appearing again now in the form of "not enough sleep," as GREAT as I am doing with this "macro counting" at end of day, seeing my remaining calories/macros and HITTING them dead on, yet, I succumb to the human condition of SELF-SABOTAGE.
I have learned it is a totally human condition, and Leigh confirms in her books about how the body pulls you where it wants to be. Why does it pull me to stay up late and be overtired? Leigh, why?
When I'm on a cut, every time i hit a low weight for the week I tend to slack off with a cheat meal. The sabotage usually comes in the form of dessert!!!
this is a great question and i'm sure everyone deals with this issue at times. I am in a rest week of OPT right now and am marveling at the benefits of 8-9 hours sleep since i typically get 6ish. The ways I sabotage my self have become apparent also. I have always had this weird thing where I will start a plan of eating very health and on the 4th day I start craving processed foods. I had started to give in and just try to work a pastry or something into my daily calories but for the past 10 days I have committed to resist the urge to sabotage. I swore off the processed carbs for 10 days just to prove to myself I can do it and once i got past the 4th day it was easier. I"m finding that something about those "bad" foods sets off of real bad mental state for me which only leads to more eating.
My sabotaging usually revolves around either a) getting frustrated that I don't see progress quickly so I have a little something here....a little something there or b) getting slack because I AM making progress. So my counter-sabotage plan for now is just to be consistent with one central thing: avoiding processed carbs.
Yesterday I noticed a huge sabotage factor that I still deal with: overdoing the exercise part. Used to get me really badly in the days I kept carbs really low but still 'ran myself into the ground' almost literally in the gym both for lifting & cardio (had excellent endurance capacity and can keep intensity up pretty well).
Afterwards I'd be too exhausted to get anything accomplished and if I'd want to recover from the workout.. I'd eventually give up on dieting and overeat. BIG mantra for me now is to take Poliquin in reverse : "there is no such thing as overtraining, only undereating"
In order to not overeat, don't overtrain. And if you do train hard, eat UP to recover and do NOT feel one morsel of guilt over it.
That's what led me to do just 3 workouts/wk and ditch all intense cardio. Just the basics.
But then you get ambitious and 'throw in everything but the kitchensink.. more exercises , challenging methods (wave loading) and..gasp, a 4th WO. So will have to reasses goals. For now I will probably go towards maintenance until I know what amt of food is needed to recover properly or .. how much I have to cut back on the volume of other workouts
Only way to remedy this is to eat enough right before going to bed.
Too many people are stuck in the (wrong) mindset they aren't supposed to eat anymore after e.g. 8-9pm, and then can't sleep and ...make the wrong choices. There'sfew things as bad as not being able to sleep. Generally when I don't want to eat more tryptophan+melatonin helps best. When there's still room.. carbs work great too.
Carb loading at night = awesome sleep
Carbs in the morning = falling asleep in daytime
I agree with Espi on this. I used to have problems falling asleep because I was physically hungry. My stomach would growl. I would try to ignore it, however, most nights I would give in and eat something. Now I plan for a snack before I go to sleep. It's usually a protein shake and some fruit. Just since it was mentioned, I also take melatonin as well.
Yesterday I was diagnosed that i do need surgery on my foot for Posterior Tibial Tendon Dysfunction (adult onset flatfoot, torn tendon). I am very upset.
So last night I had a Trader Joe's meal I used to love; I had 2 portions, not 1. It was the first time I went over my calories and macros on REPAIR in the past 19 days. I'm sure it didn't do damage, but it was definitely an emotional eating reaction, definitely familiar sabotage, definitely I was conscious of what I was doing, that it was emotional, that it was not in my best interest or my on my program, and I chose CHOSE to do it anyway.
That is an example of my self sabotage.
In the past, I would have been hooked and continued today.
Having a GOAL (finish REPAIR), seems to be a huge help pulling me away from sabotage and back to program/commitment.
For me, it's the tryptophan that works best. That or lotsa carbs which = also more tryptophan in the brain.
W/o it , esp on workout days, I end up just being too wired. Growling stomachs don't mean anything to me ,viz. it's not a physical discomfort that signals.. OMG I'm so hungry. But being totally wired and having a heart almost jumping out of your chest.. you bet that keeps me awake. That's why I'm also saving some carbs on workout days for the last meal.
Coming back to self-sabotage, the worst thing to do is to not plan ahead (both in calories as in actual food). Failing to plan = planning to fail. Even when you then decide to do something else, or ignore the plans, that's better than not planning at all.
Again, agreed. It's a little compulsive, but I don't go to bed until I have the next day's meals planned. Oh, I'll make little adjustments later, but rarely anything major. ie. I use a lot of homemade breads and I'm not always consistent in slicing them, so I'll put in slightly higher than the average and adjust as needed. Same with fruit. As we bring a new basket of fruit into the house I'll check one and use that weight for planning, putting in actuals as needed.
Doing this keeps me on plan. I'm rarely hungry without knowing what I can have. That helps a lot.
Oh.. I'm changing plans very often, but I am also doing everything from home & prepare from scratch, so mostly I can make last minute adjustments, w/o changing calorie targets. Macro targets are somewhat harder to stay close to once you end up changing things, but even those can be done, if I change things ahead of time.
It's also very much a game to me, viz. to change things but still end up hitting all targets.
Yesterday I was diagnosed that i do need surgery on my foot for Posterior Tibial Tendon Dysfunction (adult onset flatfoot, torn tendon). I am very upset.
So last night I had a Trader Joe's meal I used to love; I had 2 portions, not 1. It was the first time I went over my calories and macros on REPAIR in the past 19 days. I'm sure it didn't do damage, but it was definitely an emotional eating reaction, definitely familiar sabotage, definitely I was conscious of what I was doing, that it was emotional, that it was not in my best interest or my on my program, and I chose CHOSE to do it anyway.
That is an example of my self sabotage.
In the past, I would have been hooked and continued today.
Having a GOAL (finish REPAIR), seems to be a huge help pulling me away from sabotage and back to program/commitment.
Etana
Sorry about your foot.
Having a goal AND being willing to share your stumbles both play into picking yourself back up again.
It's also very much a game to me, viz. to change things but still end up hitting all targets.
I've really enjoyed that aspect of Leigh's programs: not just hitting calories, but aiming to hit macros, as a game. I do also plan the day ahead, which I used to do on Body For Life, but now I have a "check book" with a certain amount of calories, fat, carb, protein, starchy carb left, so I really know what I can have for the evening... instead of the evening being vague.... like, "oh, I can nibble on these crackers instead of a meal" kind of thought. Then those crackers could easily lead to late night self-sabotage.
Can't do dairy anymore myself and when I did , I noticed that while normally I'd sleep throughout the night, Quark (similar to cottage cheese) made me wake up after3-4 hrs.
The very day I stopped doing this after 2 weeks in which I couldn't sleep continuously nearly every night, I slept throughout the night and have been doing this all nights (except when the whoosh fairy pays a visit about once a month).
You might be surprised about improved sleep when switching to another protein source ... don't know why but it just worked that way.
What brand of Melatonin did you try? Was it 1mcg or 3? 3 is the normal adult dose, though they say to start with the smaller dose and then just take what you need to get the effect. I take it about 15-20 before I want to go to sleep and then try to do something quiet (like reading a book or something) for a bit while I wait for it to take effect. Some brands are more effective than others, though.
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