Imagine if you will...

Me and my gorgeous mother xox

...my shock and horror when I found out that my mother had been right all along.  Mama Spitfyre always told me that the secret to losing weight was eating right and exercise. 

Well, it's true.  And I'm going to let you in on another secret...

It's about 80% food and 20% exercise, Heather (my dietitian) told me that...but if Jonathan asks, I did NOT repeat it.  Haha...he did, however, say something to the extent of:  what's the point of working out if you're not eating properly?  That I get.

And here's the deal...I haven't been eating enough. 

If you've been reading my blog, you'll already know that I am a bit of a control freak.  This results in an all or nothing perfectionist mentality that gets me into trouble frequently, but I deal.  It's been 5 weeks of eating "right" so far, and my challenge currently (or in reality for the last 5 weeks) is eating the right things, in the right proportions, at the right times.  I am not cheating, I am not giving into temptation, but I am restricting.

The problem is, I'm not hungry.  I am not.  I am making good food, as you'll know from EAT ME.  But, it's more about...working out makes me feel nauseous.  A fact that made Jonathan show me all the exit signs when we first started training, and say...at the end of those stairwells, there is a door to outside should you feel the need to vom.  I have not thrown up yet, but after I work out, I don't want to eat...and that's exactly when I should eat.  Heather suggests some yogourt or a carb of some sort...especially if I am going to work out again later.  Enter, my food issues.  But, if I don't eat, I'll lose weight, right?  Wrong.

Ate whatever I wanted when I wanted and still lost 7 pounds in Paris!

The deal is, and this is hard for me, if I eat more....my metabolism speeds up to metabolise (go figure) the calories that I have taken in.  This means that ever time I take food in at the right times...my metabolism kicks in and thinks, use this don't store it.  Even when I'm not working out...I need to space my meals throughout the day and eat every few hours.  Why is this so hard for me?  Sounds like an amazing thing EAT MORE FOOD...but, alas, control freak.  I have jumped back into the mindset of my teenage self - restrict calories and I lose weight, right?  Nope.  Not necessarily.

Heather came by my house after my 1st week on a diet and I gave her my food diary.  She said things looked pretty good, besides the couple bottles of wine that were had....and told me I needed to consume more calories.  Especially when I told her my future work out schedule (we both had a laugh at how much I was going to be working out), she said I was definitely going to need to eat more.  But it's so weird to have someone tell me, of all people, "you need to eat more food" when that's exactly what strarted my weight gain in the first place!  Yes, yes I need food because my body uses a lot of calories just being.  And if I work out?  Well, I'll need to eat more of it, but I want to pull big numbers...I want to be the biggest loser.  However, I also want this to be sustainable.  I want to keep this going...so I'll eat more.  I promise.