Monday recap - as requested ;)

Ok, eager readers :)  Here's the Monday recap.  I've changed fonts today.  What do you think?

For breakfast I tried my lemon blueberry buttermilk muffins.  They are very very good.  I had them again this morning.  Maybe I will post the recipe later in case y'all want to make them.

Then came lunch.  Lunch is proving increasingly difficult for me.  There are no lunch recipes in the book that I like.  The sandwich I had the other day was a breakfast recipe.  Now, I know that I can eat a breakfast recipe or a dinner recipe at lunch but, for some reason, I don't really want those things at lunch.  I guess I'm used to having something quick and easy and I'm not really in the mood to have to cook or assemble my food at lunchtime.  I prefer to just stick it in the microwave.  So, since there was nothing I wanted to eat yesterday, I had 3 peanut butter cookies and a glass of skim milk (which is a "meal" on this diet) for lunch. I will probably have that again today.

A few hours after that should have been snack time but I was running errands and forgot to take a snack with me.  We have already discussed how it is impossible to find food that is diet-friendly to snack on while you're out so I just didn't eat anything.  By the time I got home and wasn't busy doing other things it was closer to dinner time so I figured I'd just wait.  Plus, we were having a "Yay Laura!" get together and I figured if I saved my snack calories for dinner I could eat a little more of the yummy food.

Now, dinner.  My dinner was not a from-the-diet MUFA (mono unsaturated fatty acid) meal.  We grilled burgers for the par-tay so I had a tiny little burger with some diet-approved muenster cheese and mustard (also diet approved).  I also had some potato salad, which is probably not diet approved, and 10 olives so that I'd have a MUFA.  So, I had 800 calories (snack + dinner) to eat and my meal was about 680 calories so I was a little under the total recommended calories for the day which I think is fine. 

Post-party I rode my bike at a good little clip for 30 minutes, burning almost 300 calories.

Now, readers, let's talk math some more. 
400 calories at breakfast + 400 calories at lunch + 680 calories at dinner = 1480 calories yesterday

1480 calories - 278ish calories burned biking = 1202 calories

Now, after much googling around I have come across this website which has a BMR calculator.  According to the website, it tells you how many calories you need to eat to maintain your weight with different levels daily of activity.  According to this website, if I sat in bed all day and did NOTHING I could eat almost 1500 calories a day and not gain weight because that is what my body needs to exist.  Either this is a load of crap and not scientifically accurate or I am a medical anomaly because, since Friday, despite my good eating, exercising, moving around all day, and 1200-1300 calories consumed (after subtracting exercise calories) I have GAINED TWO POUNDS.  Almost three pounds really.  Two and some change. WHAT?  Irritating.

This doesn't make any sense.  And it's not "muscle weight" or whatever junk people like to tell you.  Now, I am trying to be reasonable about this little upset but I will not continue on a diet where I am gaining weight.  No way.  

Ok, back to me trying to be reasonable.  I know that the initial 7 pound loss was mostly water weight.  So it could be some of that coming back.  What I don't understand is why it is coming back.  I am practically floating away for all the water I drink in a day.  You are supposed to drink water to keep water weight off.  Got it.  That's what I'm doing.  I am not eating salty bad for you foods that make you hold water and I'm not drinking anything else except water.  It doesn't add up.

Here's my thought.  At the end of last week, the bland week, even without losing water weight, I should have easily dropped about two pounds - the healthy amount to lose in a week while doing any diet and exercising.  Since I am continuing to eat well and exercise this week I should lose another two pounds.  If, when I weigh in on Friday morning, I am not sitting at at least four pounds lost from my initial weigh in, I'm kicking this diet to the curb and going back to just counting calories.  Any thoughts on this?  Please let me know your opinion.  I know this is only the second week but should I really give a diet where I am gaining back weight another week to prove itself?  By the time it's over I could weigh more than when I started!

I have a doctor's appointment on Friday and I'm going to tell them about this insanity and see if they think something's off.  It is really very frustrating to gain weight so easily, work hard to take it off, and then step on the scale and see the number go up instead of down.

Now here is an unrelated comment, at the end of my long post: please take some time today to remember that you are super awesome amazing just for being you.