I have been hovering around the 160 lb mark for some time now. I am ready to get the weight loss going again. I have been really contemplating what is causing this plateau. I think one thing is that my body has not been at this low of a weight in YEARS, and it isn't quite sure what is going on. Consistency should take care of that issue.
I don't think that is the only issue though. I decided to take a closer look at my nutrition. On "My Fitness Pal", the App I use to track my food and exercise, there is a "nutritional summary" that shows a break down of my daily meals. I discovered something VERY interesting. First of all, I have my Daily Calorie Goal set at 1700. So the MFP App automatically determines how many grams of fat, carbs, and protein I should consume based on that calorie allowance. It takes into account any exercise I do and makes slight adjustments in my "goal" numbers based on the exercise. It also determines the amount of other things like sodium, cholesterol, vitamins and sugar. SUGAR....very interesting when I started looking at the sugar.
I have said for a long time that my addiction and reaction to sugar (in the processed form) is much what I suspect an alcoholic is like with alcohol. Once I begin eating sweets, my body doesn't have a "Stop" signal that activates. I could literally eat an ABSURD amount of sweets and NOT get sick and NOT feel satisfied either. I'm happy to report that I have successfully avoided processed sweets since beginning this challenge and I truly don't miss them (or the cravings or the horrible emotional feelings I experience after binging on sweets). So needless to say, when I noticed my SUGAR grams were DOUBLE AND TRIPLE what was "recommended" by My Fitness Pal, I was SHOCKED! Here are some screen shots from the MFP App that show my nutritional summary over the last few days. This screen shot does not show my overall calories for the day so I am putting that down in the caption under each picture.
The bottom line is I am consuming WAY TOO MUCH SUGAR!!! I had no idea I was doing this with my current diet. Fresh fruit is the biggest culprit of the high sugar grams. Surprisingly, 1 cup of fresh fruit has A LOT of natural sugar. For instance, pineapple has 14.4 grams, strawberries have 8 grams, cantaloupe has 14 grams. and mango has the highest with 24 grams. I was also surprised to find that 1% Cottage Cheese is relatively high in sugar content with 8 sugar grams/1 cup. The Kind Bars (healthy nut/fruit bars) I have been eating every day have around 10 sugar grams. Baby carrots (3 oz) have 5 sugar grams. You get the picture.
Certainly, natural sugars are far better for me than processed sugars, which are not only empty calories, but are also usually consumed in the form of candy, ice cream or cakes, which have additional fat calories. However, natural sugar still causes my blood sugar to rise and then drop which will make me hungry. Consuming that much extra sugar is not what my body needs and if I am going to truly change my habits and stop my addiction to sugar, I am going to have to address all kinds of excessive sugar consumption, including the natural kind. I'm not suggesting I stop all sugar consumption but I am going to monitor this more closely and do my best to stay as close to my daily allotment as possible. I suspect my weight will begin to drop again. It will be interesting to see what happens.
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| Total Calories for the day were 1695. Sugar Goal 42 grams Sugar Consumed 78 grams 36 grams OVER |
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| Total Calories for the day were 1616. Sugar Goal 36 grams Sugar Consumed 76 grams 40 grams OVER |
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| Total Calories for the day were 1915. Sugar Goal 38 grams Sugar Consumed 100 grams 62 grams OVER |
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| Total Calories for the day were 1559. Sugar Goal 42 grams Sugar Consumed 138 grams (Yikes!) 96 grams OVER |
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| Total Calories for the day were 1027. Sugar Goal 38 grams Sugar Consumed 36 grams 2 grams UNDER (YAY!) |
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