I'm not at all sure what the difference has been. I've exercised a little most days, but I did that before. I've been a little hungry before going to bed, but ditto previous. I'm eating roughly 1000 calories a day, I think, same as before. But I've lost weight at 2-3 times the rate I did in the past. The only real difference I can think of is that I'm eating somewhat fewer simple carbs than I used to. I still have some carbs at every meal, but it's half a slice of multigrain bread for breakfast, some buckwheat or other whole wheat noodles at lunch (in the Lean Cuisine meals), and then a small amount of white rice at dinner (about half what I used to eat). I don't snack much, but when I do, it's often a bit of cheese instead of something carb-based.
Anyway, the main thing I'm taking away from this is that bodies are variable, it's not as simple as calories-in, calories-out, and maybe the people who are so mean and snide about people who have trouble losing weight are doing it because the one time they tried, the pounds just melted off. The way they have for me in the past few weeks. And so they think it's that easy for everyone, and it's just not. The last time I tried to lose weight, I ate less, and exercised more, and was gnawingly, distractingly hungry most of the time, and it was all much less effective than this time. So weird.
I also think this would be much harder during the school year, when I'm having lunch on campus, and also busier. And anytime I socialize with people, it totally throws things off.
I'm going to keep going with this; we'll see if this rate continues, or if I plateau at some point. Maybe my body was just trying to get back to my pre-Anand weight? (That's roughly where I am now.) I'd still like to lose about seven more pounds before the wedding (July 30th), which would get me back to a curvy and pleasant size 12. And then after that...well, we'll see.
I would think the extreme stress you are under with housing and child responsibilities would be causing you to burn a lot more calories.
Heh. I’ve never heard of stress burning calories, David. But it’d be nice to think so — sort of a karmic balancing.
Stress does burn calories; the problem is it tends to make you crave a lot more calories than it burns (obviously people differ on this — some people lose their appetite when they’re stressed).
I’m not the least bit surprised — I also saw a huge difference between a low-calorie diet (for a while I was < 1200 kcal/day, but much of that was rice, pasta and cereal; I never budged an ounce), and a low-carb one (on which I've dropped nearly 20 lbs with little effort). If you've followed the discussion on utd at all you've probably heard enough on the subject, though 🙂