So this is my third or fourth weight loss attempt, hard to keep track. I've gained and lost the same 40 lbs many times. I've been doing CICO since I was 17. I'm now 28.
At the start of this year I made myself a little 4X10 grid, with each square representing a pound. I've had it on my desk since then. I only check off a pound once I'm well past it. Right now I have 13 lbs checked off and I'm 17 lbs down.
This time, same as all the other times, I've had periods where I gain weight apparently for no reason. Over the course of a couple days I gain 1.5-2 pounds. When this happens I assume I'm doing something wrong with my calorie intake even though I'm very careful. In the past, I would be pretty discouraged by it, and would end up overeating. It would send me into a tailspin where I gained 3-5 lbs before getting back on track.
It happened again about a week ago; I was gaining for no reason even though I'd been eating well. This time I remembered all the posts I've read on here explaining these unexplained gains, and the reassurance that the overall trend of weight when you stick to your calorie budget is linear and downwards. So I stayed the course, and sure enough it started to plateau and maybe go down a few fractions of a pound.
The past two days have been difficult due to environmental factors. I wasn't able to get exact calorie counts due to restaurants but I overate slightly on both days. Yesterday morning I had lost 0.2 lbs. This morning I had lost a full 2 lbs, dropping to a new low. Even though I ate out yesterday at a buffet!!
I've gained weight "for no reason" before but I've never lost weight for no reason! It's silly but ever since I was a teenager first starting to watch my weight I always figured that your weight reflected how you'd done the previous day. Now I'm realizing that it's your cumulative efforts from the days and weeks before that impact that weight. And I've always gotten frustrated and messed up at plateaus before so I've never had an unexpected drop like this.
Another probably even more significant reason why I'd never had a loss after a day of overeating before - previously if I overate I would binge. There was no going slightly over. This has been a constant through all my diet attempts. In the past if I felt like a day was ruined I would go ahead and really ruin it.
I had the temptation to binge yesterday. I was feeling bummed about two bad days in a row. I have this bag of chocolate chips I've been snacking on (16 chips for 70 calories!) and I got home from the buffet and I thought about eating the whole bag or maybe even just one serving (that would probably have become the whole bag).
But I stopped myself because I don't allow binge days anymore, because I've gotten myself to understand that overeating does exactly as much damage as it does. Calories are calories whether I eat them as part of a 6000 calorie binge or as a dessert after dinner the next day. There's nothing magical about a binge.
So now, after two days of overeating, I'm down 2 lbs. I'm sure it's gonna jump around a little bit but it'll keep on going downwards.
TL;DR After 11 years of practicing CICO I finally understand it.
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