What not to do

Even sane people do crazy things sometimes. Everyone who has lost any amount of weight will know that there's one mad habit you have to give up. You have to put this thing on the 'never do it' list:

Things never to do while concentrating on fatloss:

1. Weigh yourself the morning after the night before

I have lost count how many stricken emails I get that have a familiar theme of 'I overate last night and this morning I am heavier than ever and about to give up and eat a box of pods, help, help, help!'.

In such incidences, the best plan is to take some deep, relaxing breaths and understand that really it IS almost impossible to actually gain 1.5kg of fat overnight. Ok, it's technically possible, but very unlikely unless you ate 11550 calories over and above what you expended that day and stored all of it as fat. It's not fat that's sloshing around your middle, Miss Piggy, you just carbed up good. This is especially noticeable and dramatic if you have been on a carb restricted diet and then go hog out on pizza bread or some other carbo-licious goodies. For every gram of carbohydrate that you store in your liver and muscles, your body will store about 3 grams of water. Compounding the scary scale problem is that restaurants want their food to taste better than what you could make at home, therefore they tend to not concern themselves with things like keeping the sodium level decent. Your body wants to maintain a stable water to sodium ratio. If your interstitial fluids become high in sodium then your body will retain more water in order to dilute it. Water weight goes on and comes off quickly. If it's still there after 3 days of fit eating then it's probably lard after all.

My current plan of attack is something I learned from the inspiring Jen when I attended her Phat Camp last year. Her motto is 'you play, you pay'. In other words, you party, then the next morning you TRAIN and you eat well. That's what I'm doing today after last nights party at Santorini (the restaurant,not the Island, sadly). This has got to be my favourite restaurant. The food is pretty good, the staff are all oozing greek mystique, it's decorated like a greek streetfront on the inside and there is a huge floorspace for greek dancing and, later, barrell dancing and the limbo. Obviously I wasn't up to much limbo activity with the back and all but gave the greek dancing (and..uh... the macarena I believe..) a go without any pain.

I snapped a few pics on my phone of the decor. That little lit area is the stage where they play the greek music on their little twangy greek guitars (what is the correct name for those things?). Kek, you come visit, I'll get you a barrell to dance on, done deal.