Day 38 251.8 lbs

I’m calling this week FLAT! Flat like Kansas kinda flat, flat like a hatband kinda flat, no changes. What gives? What happened? Well,.. let’s examine that!

This week I discovered that I like chocolate and walnuts, together, in my mouth at the same time. Chased by a rye old fashion no less. And for the past couple of evenings I’ve had at least one round of that. It consists of about 2 oz of walnuts and the same portion of vegan chocolate chips, frozen of course and my recipe of a rye old fashion which is actually about 2 oz of rye and 1 oz of rum with bitters and turbinato sugar. Stir all that up and garnish with a fresh lemon peel and it’s a fantastic cocktail! But,.. any work you’ve done that day to lose weight is now void, gone, kaput, out like a light, vanished like the invisible man, history like WWII. No matter how hard you’ve worked it’s done for the day.

Good news though,.. as long as you’ve been good, you wont GAIN any weight of note. So, the message is if you’re going to be bad, be good and the net effect will be nothing on the scale. Bad news if you’re hoping for something better than flat.

So what gives? Why is that the death nail for losing weight? I’ll tell you my theory and let you know it’s based on the science in Dr. Michael Gregors’s book, “How Not to Diet”. First, circadian rhythm. In the morning your body can handle some extra calories and not store them as fat, in the evening your blood sugar tends to raise which has an inculin release, which causes fat storage. Second, alcohol cannot be metabolized into anything in the body. The body has to use it first, and it does, which in turn stops the burning of other sources, fat, carbs, anything. So, nothing changes,… but alcohol also breaks down your inhibitions and makes you hungry, so you eat more and BAM,.. weight gain! As you can easily see, the combination of sugar in chocolate, fat from nuts and alcohol is a triple whammy if you want to lose weight. And in this is the struggle! Not so much for the alcohol, but he total relaxation in the picture that occurs above. I can’t be on the bike or running every night, that isn’t feasible. Replacing something you enjoy that brings relaxation with something else isn’t hard, but you have to figure it out. I need to figure it out. What positive evening habit can I create. One that doesn’t involve too much material? hmm,..