Day 14: Dawning understanding

So, I am finally beginning to understand my own patterns of weight gain and loss. Let me enlighten you. As you know, I have been losing weight over the past two weeks, and that pleases me. As you also know, I indulged mightily at the Warms gathering on Friday (five days ago). My weight notched up, and it still isn't down to pre-indulgence status, even though every day since then, I have stayed pretty much on course with exercise, nutritional shakes, healthy eating, intermittent fasting, etc. I am sure when I have my official weigh-in on Friday, my weight will have gone down (because I am in my extremely determined phase), but this whole episode gives me pause. Who doesn't indulge every once in a while, am I right? Well, let's say you indulge one night, but then you just eat normally after that (not in diet/healthy eating mode). It's possible your weight increases two pounds and doesn't go back down. A week later, you indulge again and go back to healthy eating. Perhaps your weight notches up just a bit and stays there, because you're not in diet mode. Even when you're not indulging all the time, those slight indulgences build up over time, until you're in the position I was when I started: more than 20 pounds over normal! 

I guess my takeaway is: maybe keep those true indulging days to a minimum, but also, after an indulging day, spend a few days really returning to healthy, minimal eating. At my age, those indulgences accumulate in the form of weight gain and don't go away without some effort.