An accidental experiment....

I am in the process of an experiment.  I've been giving a lot of thought lately to my eating habits and scale weight and what my fitness goals are.

I'm hungry a LOT.  I always attribute this to my hunger switch being broken.  Meaning my body isn't hungry but my mind is.  But I'm not so sure about that now.

After doing some reading I'm wondering if some of the issues I've had lately with anxiety have to do with not eating enough.  I typically eat around 1700 calories a day during the week.  If you remember, when I met with the dietitian in October 2012, she was recommending 2200 per day.  And I think I exercise more now then when I met with her.  And when I do some of those online calculators, they recommend 2200, too.

So for the week or so, I've just been eating.  Not crazy eating, but not so restrictively.  And this weekend I ate a lot more then I typically do.  

As I posted yesterday, I had a great long run.  Now, there are a lot of factors, like the weather being AMAZING that probably played into that.  But I can't help but wonder if the high amount of calories I took in on Saturday fueled me the way I need to be fueled to run that amount.

And then I ate more yesterday.  Not a ton more, but probably 400 calories more.  Now normally I am ready to hurt someone I am so hungry by lunch.  But guess what?  I was what I would call having a "normal hunger" by the time I was ready to eat lunch.  And that is after running 15 miles yesterday and working on the chicken coop for 3 hours.  

It felt...good.  Really good.

What didn't feel good?  When I got on the scale this morning and it read an outrageous number of 123.6.  UGGGGGGG.....

Now there is an awesome site called Go Kaleo where she talks about disordered eating and the need to ditch the dieting mentality.  It's a very in depth site with a lot to it and I highly recommend it.  She states that going from a restrictive diet to increasing your calories to a healthy level will result in a temporary, but very real weight gain.  She says temporary because you will drop back down after your body gets "reset".

So I don't want to panic.  And here's the deal - if I am hungry and anxious all the time at 117 pounds, and feel good at 123, doesn't it make sense that I should go ahead and be the higher weight?  You would think so, right?  But that thought scares the shit out of me.  Because there's part of me that believes that this is just an EXCUSE to eat too much.  And is the start of the inevitable slide back to obesity.  

I am committed - I think - to playing out this experiment until the end of April.  I want to pay closer attention to my eating habits and noticing how I feel and how I sleep and how it effects my exercise.  I'm not sure if I can get beyond the idea that I must weigh under 119 or I am failing.  

I wore this dress for the first time today.  I bought it late last fall and haven't had a chance to wear it due to the cold weather until today.  And when I put it on, I was positive that I looked SO MUCH FATTER then when I tried it on last fall.  I almost changed.  

Here's the good news, I have some anxiety about this experiment and my looks, but also some hope and I feel at peace with playing it out for a while.  Stay tuned....