Sodium-Fest 2010!

Apparently sodium is my kryptonite.

This week has been fairly interesting. I knew I only had to lose 2 lbs this week to hit my 40 lb milestone. That should be easy, right? I mean, I'm averaging close to 4 lbs a week; I got this!

So I weigh in on Tuesday and I'm UP .25 lbs! What?! I've been doing great; staying on plan and trying new recipes from their cookbook. Of course, this wasn't a huge surprise or anything, as the scale at home had been either staying flat or showing small gains; creeping back up .2 lbs at a time. 

Can I just stop right here and say there is nothing LESS motivating than a lack of results? I mean, if I'm not going to lose weight or even gain weight, I can eat pizza and do that, right!? That being said, I have stuck to it and have not eaten any food off-plan. But I WANTED to, you know?

Ok, back to the SlimGenics Center and my sitting there saying WHY!? They look over my food journal and immediately notice that I've been eating cottage every day for almost a week. I previously hadn't really eaten it at all, as I'm a much bigger fan of the greek yogurt or eggs for breakfast, but lots of the recipes that looked good to me include cottage cheese as your protein. 

Apparently, cottage cheese is full of sodium and it appears that I've been retaining water. It's not listed as such on the plan, but they said that I really shouldn't eat cottage cheese two days in a row and never on the same day as beef, the other big sodium culprit. Oops. I'd been eating it every day for many, many days.

And of course, I had brought a Lean Cuisine 4-Cheese Pizza to work with me for lunch that day, which had over 600mg of sodium AND I was planning on grilling steak for dinner that night to enjoy the nice weather. Ok, so Tuesday turned into Sodium-Fest 2010. I got on the scale Wednesday morning and wasn't the least bit surprised to be up another .6 lbs.

Another digression here: so how does water retention work? I mean, if I'm still technically eating few enough calories to lose weight, but retaining water, why don't I still see a small loss? Does the lost fat just make room for water and I retain more and more water as I lose weight?! This concept seems silly to me, but the fact remains that I have been staying the same or gaining for like 4 days... Hmm...

Ok, so I resolve to eat as little sodium as possible starting Wednesday and see how the rest of the week goes. I got on the scale Thursday morning and was down 1.25 lbs from the day before. Clearly shedding some water weight. I weigh in at the center and I'm also down 1.25 lbs from Tuesday's weigh-in, putting me at 39 lbs total!! Only 1 more lb to go by Saturday to make it an even 40!!

Of course, I was rushed yesterday morning (Thursday) and ended up grabbing quick snacks and another Lean Cuisine meal for lunch. I didn't want to do that, because one of the snacks I grabbed and the meal contained over 1,000 mg of sodium between them, but it was that or nothing in order to get to work on time. 

This morning I was actually down another .2 lbs from yesterday, but I really think it would have been more if I had laid off the sodium-laced food again. They said it sometimes takes 2-3 days for your body to shed all the water weight, so I screwed it up yesterday.

So now I am off work until Tuesday, giving me plenty of time to plan each meal and make sure I steer clear of kryptonite, I mean sodium. ;-)