Karen writes: Update on losing weight through eating more...

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As I wrote a bit over a week ago, I have been worrying about my steadily increasing weight so I got some professional sports dietary advice.  That advice, in a nutshell, was to eat more, especially carbohydrates and protein. Now I'm eating every 2-3 hours during the day, some protein, some carb, its hard work.

What probably is surprising is that I have been pretty much actually following the advice, notable exceptions were falling off the wagon for birthday cake in the office, and pie and chocolate on Friday's 5 hour bike ride.  I may also admit...perhaps...to some m&m cookies which followed me home for the kids lunchboxes, I had to do a quality control test on them myself first.  I am eating more, ignoring (trying to) the energy in/out calorie approach, and concentrating on quality.

 I started this process feeling nervous so it wasn't a big surprise to me really that after my sterling efforts to push MORE food in I am steadily putting on weight.  I feel like I did the one and only time I tried properly carb-loading, sluggish, sort of packed tight in my skin.  So I contacted the dispenser of the eat more advice to ask at what point should I panic.  His answer was "the weight gain is not unusual given the diet you were on before, the body is adjusting to the increased carbs by loading water.  The whole purpose of this plan is to arrest the muscle breakdown that was occurring as a result of not having enough carbs and energy overall". Yep.
picture from "Laces & Lipgloss"
It does make some kind of twisted sense though, going on a low carb diet results in rapid weight loss to start with because basically you are getting rid of quantities of water. I guess going from inadequate to high carb could bring about the reverse.  Gavin thinks I might put on another couple of kg before my body gets back into some sort of more healthy relationship with the fuel I put into it. I'm hoping its not going to be that much more though, I'm about to bust out of my cycle shorts!

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