Realizing Harmony

Yesterday was the first day of week 5 on the HealthPointe 2.0 program for me.  What that means is it was time to shift from the weight-loss part of the program (which can last up to 4 weeks at a time) to the metabolic-adjustment (or “add more food”) part of the program.

The objective of this phase is to ramp up your body’s metabolism without gaining more than 2 lbs. over the next two weeks.

The way this is done is by carefully increasing the amount of good carbohydrates you’re eating.  So, instead of being on a moderate-protein and low-carb/low-fat diet, for this portion it’s a moderate-protein/moderate-carb and low-fat diet.

There was a wierd thing that happened though… although I raised my carbs, I lost more weight between Monday morning and Tuesday morning than I’d lost between last Wednesday morning and Sunday morning!

How to explain that?

It actually goes all the way back to the prior Thursday.  (That’s Thursday the 7th of August.)  At that time I’d gotten my weight down to one of my body’s “set points.”  That’s a weight where it had previously been, and that I’d held for quite some time.  My body wanted to stay there, thinking “oh, this feels good!”  But I kept pushing it to lose more over the next week and a half.  (Of course, I failed to push hard enough when on Sunday the 10th I splurged at two different parties.)

Well, yesterday (that’s Monday the 18th), I’d finally broken through that “set point.”  And even though I increased my carbs, my body was “free” of that point, and just kept on losing weight.  So today I need to increase the carbs even more, to avoid the loss.

This is the part of the program that’s both fun and strange.  Fun, because you get to eat quite a bit more food.  But strange because you can wind up feeling too full, but you have to keep on eating… in order to stabilize and/or lose more weight.

Side note: Last time my wife and I went through this program and got to this stage, there was one evening meal where I just broke out laughing.  It looked like she’d barely touched her plate – there was so much food on it – and she looked at me with sad eyes and said, “I’m FULL.  I don’t want to eat any more.”  And I had to insist (with a smile, and then a laugh), “Look, you’re trying to lose weight.  So you’ve got to finish everything on your plate!”

Whoever heard of stuffing yourself to lose weight?  Or to keep it off?  So strange! 

But it works!