I've been looking at my calorie total, and I've been gradually eating less and less every week. I'm not sure this is a good idea, and it makes me wonder if my weight loss is slowing because my body is in major starvation mode. I only lost 1 pound last week, and it looks like I'm only going to lose a pound this week as well.

In week 1 of my new eating plan, I ate a total of 11,814 calories. I'm at week 7 now, and my calorie total for the week is 10,044. I went from an average of eating 1,688 calories a day in week 1 to 1,435 calories a day. And what's really weird is, I don't feel like I'm starving or eating less than I did before. The only difference is I don't have any days where I really went over my calorie total anymore. I read somewhere once that if you eat too few calories your body goes into starvation mode. In starvation mode, you get colder and your immune system is weakened, and you end up getting more colds. Is this what's happening with me?

I think I'm going to have to experiment with this theory and try to eat more next week. I want to lose weight, but I want to do it the right way so I don't trigger my body to go into mass starvation mode. The thought of having a cold every month is just wigging me out, since I hardly ever get colds. Being sick is so miserable. I think being sick and ill all the time puts a major stress on your body and ages you. Look at anybody you know who's been through a major illness, and you'll see that the illness completely aged them. The formerly sick also never seem to recover their youthfulness either. My skin crawls at the thought.

I've been so lucky to have been blessed in my adulthood with good health. I was an asthmatic sickly chid, who was allergic to everything. In junior high when puberty kicked in, my asthma and my allergies disappeared and I've been pretty healthy ever since. I'm definitely going to have to experiment with adding more calories into my diet. My body never seems to work like anyone else's, so it does seem possible that I'm not eating enough calories even though I now weigh 13 pounds less than when I first started. I could try it for a week to see what happens. The worse thing that could happen is I gain a couple of pounds back, but at least then I'll know that my weight loss is normal and not plateauing or slowing down.

I'm just so bummed out though, because I expected to have a 2 pound weight loss per week. I thought I would be at my goal weight by December or January. If I only lose 1 pound a week, I won't be at my preferred weight until April of next year, and that seems like such a long, long time away. I think the truth is, I'm going to have to resign myself to the fact that I'll be eating this way for the rest of my life or at least until my weight stabilizes and stays where I want it to stay, without much thought or effort on my part. But how long is that going to take? I saw a dieting site from a woman who says she's still vigilant about her eating, even though she's been at her goal weight for 3 years now. One would think one could get to a point of equilibrium where your weight would stay the same without constantly watching it. But not according to this woman.

Maybe it's true what they say in those 12 step groups. You have to take one day a time. If you look too far ahead into the future, you'll freak out because the future just seems so overwhelming. I mean it's not exactly a pleasant thought to me that I'll be inputting everything I eat into an excel worksheet for the rest of my life. I'm not that anal after all. But I can do it, I can deal with it, I can tolerate and put up with it, if I just think of it as something that I have to do today. Is this what alcoholics go through?