Why going off plan doesn't work for special events...
I've been LCing for over a year, with minimal success. I guess the minimal success part is why I thought breaking the plan would be OK for a few days.
My brother got married yesterday.
This is a picture of my life on Wednesday:
I offered to make anything the bride wanted for her bachelorette party that I was going to host for her on Thursday. After several months of careful eating, I thought it was a kind gesture. She wanted fresh baked bread, chocolate chip cookies, brownies and pudding shots made with Bailey's Irish cream.
I went shopping for all of these things and set out to prepare them. While the cookies were in the oven, I thought about the rest of the week and how awkward LC was going to be.
Thursday was the bachorette party for which I was providing the food for, so no big deal there. The big deal was going to be the bar-hopping after dinner. I'd have to be difficult with every round, asking for a shot of something that wasn't Schnapps, turning down tropical drinks with umbrellas and avoiding eating any food at the inevitable fourthmeal stop at Taco Bell late into the night.
Friday was the rehearsal dinner. It had been previously scheduled at a local mom-and-pop place for months, which I thought was going to be easy to work around. At the last minute, the location was moved the Olive Garden.
Saturday was the actual wedding and the plan was to go to the salon early for hair and makeup. Lunch was to be sub sandwiches that the salon special orders in for such occasions.
The limo ride after the ceremony was preplanned with Moscato champagne (icky sweet) or beer.
The wedding meal was to be typical wedding fare: meats and green beans sopping in carby sauces, potatoes with gravy, mountains of bread, carb-loaded salads and a fruit platter with a chocolate fountain.
Cake. The bride and groomed shopped for cake for weeks. They chose one heck of a local cake expert. Each tier was a different gourmet flavor that the couple had picked out.
Sunday morning brunch. This is an after-party event where the newly married couple open their gifts, while all the close family members eat more carby salads, fresh fruits, sandwiches, etc.
Booze. This was my big justification. If I planned on drinking for three events over the course of three days, would I really be in ketosis? It would seem as though I'd barely recuperate from the first event before pouring myself another glass at the next.
So I did it... I decided to break my diet. I did so on Wednesday night by having a sample of the baked goods that I made.
On Thursday, I didn't go overboard with food... I had a single slice of rye bread for a sandwich, a corn tortilla taco shell at lunch, a bit of (non-sweetened) fruit salad, a few of those pudding shots, a chocolate cherry martini and a slightly more sweet wine than I would drink normally. I avoided the "fourthmeal". I thought I'd done pretty well for myself considering the damage I could have done.
On Friday, I ate leftover sandwich stuff and had a white bun bread. In the afternoon, I was hungry again so I grabbed a few hand fulls of some chex mix that was leftover from the party. I also munched on about a half-pound of raw carrots because this is one vegetable I truly miss LCing and felt it was a worthy cheat. By the time the rehearsal dinner came around, I was starving in a way unfamiliar to me. I was totally obsessed with food; I couldn't concentrate on the instructions for the ceremony, even.
The outfit I'd picked out for the dinner didn't fit; I got the pants on but couldn't sit down comfortably.
These large event things always take a while for food and unfortunately the Olive Garden makes up for this with never-ending garlic breadsticks fresh out of the oven. I ate 4 of them and then ate just the chicken out of the chicken alfredo because the pasta wasn't very good at all. I didn't have any alcoholic beverages as planned that night. I went home and went to bed hungry despite eating a reasonable amount of food. Normally, the chicken alone, alongside a few veggies, could get me through to bed without feeling hungry at all.
On Saturday morning, I woke up bloated and puffy from what I assume was a triple hit on my body... 1, PMS water retention, 2, going off plan water retention and 3, a jolt of salt from processed foods that my body is no longer accustomed to. It was so bad that my eyes only opened as slits; it was painful to flex my fingers and toes. I drank 32 ounces of water, 2 cups of coffee, took a dose of Midol (because it has diuretics) and put cucumber over my eyes before going into the salon and when I got there, the cosmetician commented that I was "super puffy" and had a difficult time applying makeup on me.
I didn't want to overdo lunch at the salon, so I ate 1/3 of a foot long sub. This was a stupid mistake; my sugar crashed during the wedding ceremony.
My dress, luckily, ran a little large so it did fit me, but my shoes were hell. It didn't help that we spent two hours in a church without AC in 90+ heat. My feet were so swollen that the tops of them hung over the tops of my shoes like a fat belly over a pair of pants that are too tight. Between the foot pain and the sugar crash, I felt faint through most of the ceremony.
When the bride saw the deep ridges caused by my shoes, she insisted that I keep them off and wear the flip flops I'd worn to the salon that morning. So yeah, I bounced into the reception hall a mess... a sugar-crashed mess in a formal dress with stupid flip flops on.
The dinner meal was fairly good and I enjoyed being off plan for it. I got a plate full of reasonable portions. I avoided the fruit and chocolate fountain. The problem was that I think I spent more time watching the buffet than I did mingling with people. I was obsessed with the idea of getting a second plate full (I didn't) and felt a little panicked when the caterers started packing things up.
Every sip of (dry) Merlot I drank made me more aware of my food cravings.
When cake time came, I enjoyed two pieces of two different gourmet flavors. I had to stop myself from going for a third.
Again, I went to bed starving, thinking about food.
This morning I woke up so puffy and bloated that I couldn't even attend the morning-after brunch. My eyes were slits once again. The clothes I'd bought for the event squeezed me. I don't feel right today and it's NOT from drinking wine (I had 3 glasses over a 5 hour period).
I am up 14 pounds. Presumably, most of this is from water retention. I feel bloated and gross. I have awful gas. I just nasty just being alive. And mostly, I feel hungry.
My plan today was to get back into LCing by fasting until dinner, and then eating induction-friendly meals for a few days to induce ketosis. I only made it to 1 pm before I broke down and made myself (LC) lunch. Now I am in the state of having eaten but feeling so hungry I could just crawl out of my skin.
I felt I had a lot of reasons to justify going off plan, the biggest being that I am only mildly successful at LCing. I don't seem to have the massive weight losses that others enjoy. I've lost and gained the same ten pounds for a year.
The thing is, there are just too many positives to eating LC that surpass weight loss. I've now learned my lesson. There's nothing worth breaking plan for. Nothing. I'd much rather be the one at the dinner that has to special order and turn down desserts and sweet cocktails.
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Live and learn on that one.
carmen
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