I Think I Know Why Crash Diets Don’t Work

Let me see if I can explain this.  I’m going to tell you about my morning weigh-ins for the last few days and my eating and exercising routine so you can understand my thinking.

This past Thursday, I weighed in at 167.6 pounds.  During the day, I drank at least 100 ounces of water.  That evening I went on an “epic” mountain bike ride.  When I say epic I mean it was a challenging ride.  I was the slowest in the group – and I am no slouch when it comes to mountain bike riding.  We did a ride in the Boise foothills that included ~4000 feet of climbing.  The total ride time was close to three hours for 21 miles of biking.  I was exhausted when I returned home.

You should also know that for dinner prior to riding I had a bowl of Cherrios.  Yes, that’s right, a bowl of Cheerios and nothing else.  I wasn’t working with much fuel on the ride.

So what did I do when I returned home from the ride-to-end-all-rides?  The better question to ask is what didn’t I do.  I didn’t eat anything. One of my weight loss secrets has been to NOT eat after dinner.  Technically, I ate dinner and it was after dinner.  That was mistake number one.

Just out of curiosity, I decided to weigh myself before going to bed.  That’s not something I typically do as I assume that I am not at my lighest in the evening.  I weighed in at 166.4 pounds – that’s 1.2 lbs lighter than when I woke up in the morning.

I went to bed and … just laid there.  I couldn’t fall asleep, much too restless.  My body was not settled down.  Finally, after midnight, I went downstairs to the kitchen and ate some apple sauce.  I think that helped. I was able to fall asleep after that.  Lesson = I should have eaten something after the exercise effort to help my body recover.

Woke up the next morning, stood on the scale and … drumroll, please … 164.4 pounds.  Yes!!!!  I lost three plus pounds in one day.  Hello 155 pounds, here I come.  The night before, I figured that if I didn’t eat after exercising, I was sure to weigh less the next morning.  And here was the proof.  I was feeling pretty good about NOT eating the night before – with the exception of the midnight snack.

Friday was uneventful.  That is until I got home later that day.  Not that I was hungry, but for whatever reason, I basically gorged myself on whatever I could get my hands on.  Cashews, cottage cheese, apple sauce, chips and salsa – I just had to eat.  And this was just before dinner.  I ate so much before dinner that I couldn’t even finish the one burrito that was for dinner.  Oh well, my body needed it.  Let’s just call this mistake number two.

Saturday morning’s weigh in … hold on to your hat for this, 168.8 pounds.  Yes, you read that right (I checked twice).  I weighed 4.4 pounds more than I did on Friday morning because of the Friday afternoon gorge fest.

The lesson I took from this is to keep the effort steady.  Extreme efforts to lose weight – even though my mountain bike ride was not intended as a weight loss session – can be quickly followed by actions that undo weight loss and even add weight.

In the future, you will find that if I do an extreme mountain bike ride like that one I did last week, that I will follow it with a sensible meal to replace some of the fuel that I burned through.

See, I’m learning.

[tags]mountain biking, exercise, Boise foothills, crash diet[/tags]