Guinea Pigging (Out)

Yesterday, I made a real effort to eat more. Ended up at about 2100 calories. Michael, who is feeling wretched at the moment, ate considerably less because he has no appetite. This morning: I'm down nearly a pound; he's up nearly a pound.

It's one data point, and it means nothing all by itself. Except food (no pun intended) for thought.

I have never in my life tried to eat MORE calories. Everything about it feels weird. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but the lifetime of conditioning is a little hard to discard totally.

But the fact of the matter is, and I thought about this long and hard after I wrote yesterday.... I weigh about the same as I did two years ago. I've tried changing the composition of my diet: lower fat more carbs resulted in more weight, more abdominal fat. I've tried lowering the calorie content of my diet: low fat, low calorie makes me exhausted, plus I feel deprived and irritable, and it's hard for me to deal with everything. I've changed the composition of my diet again, to low carb: tons more energy, but not that much weight loss. Lower calories with low carb: lose weight for a day or two and then stall. So... by process of elimination, the obvious thing to try would be the thing that everyone keeps suggesting... add more calories. It's the only thing that I haven't made a real effort to try.

So, what the hell, I guess.

But here's the issue that I have with all these sorts of things... how long is a reasonable trial period for minor changes? There are so many day-to-day fluctuations... is a day enough? Obviously not. A week? Better. A month... well, that would really be better, but the months slide by so fast. I don't want to give a whole month to every minor change. I want to get on with this.

Yes, I know. Patience is good.