I’m taking a walk of shame. After three whole months of eating a low carb diet and resisting cake, the devil whispered in my ears and said I was due for a cheat day. Well, as the headline suggests, it ended up being more than a day, hides face. I went on rampage eating all those mercilessly delicious carb-heavy foods and I thought it was only right that I come back and report myself to you, my friends and readers, who might have thought I’ve got this sugar thing figured out. Clearly, I don’t. But that’s okay. I know I can’t possibly beat a 30-something-years long sugar addiction in just a few months. It’s a vicious battle in which I have committed not to quit, no matter how many times I might stumble.

To a large extent, I believe my fall from grace was induced by a weight loss plateau. After losing 16 kgs within a period of two months, the scale stopped moving. And yes, I know weight loss experts discourage relying on the scale as a measure of progress but I’m one of those who love to weigh themselves at least once a day and when I see those numbers drop, it’s so satisfying. It motivates me to push harder and shows me the fruits of resisting moist chocolate cake. But when I step on that scale and the number which I see is the same for several weeks, frustration kicks in and unfortunately, one of the ways I handle frustration is by indulging in some sweet treats. And so, the ‘cheating’ seed is planted and then begins the game of resistance. At this point, I am literally one frustration away from making a bad food decision.

My breaking point came when for a whole week, my offspring decided no one in our house could sleep at night. Well, it wasn’t their fault, they were unwell and fussy and needed me more than usual. The lack of sleep tipped the scale and I went in search of the richest chocolate cake in Lusaka and damn! I found it. I took my first bite and I closed my eyes to savour the taste. Three months of deprivation made it taste like a piece of heaven. Eish, I am not sure I should be describing this now that I am attempting to get back on track. Should I? You’re right, I should veer away from that memory!

Anyway, that was the only cheat day I was supposed to have. But let me tell you how rats caused me to put my diet on the bench for a while. You see, rats and cockroaches were threatening to evict us from our home. I was tired of being greeted by cockroaches when I open my kitchen drawers and discovering that rats had eaten some valuable items – those things even ate my breast pump’s air tube! So, I devised a plan. We would get professionals to come and fumigate the whole house and lay some traps for the rats while we took a short local vacation. And that’s exactly what we did. As you can guess, the devil whispered in my ears, “who diets while on vacation?” Fortunately, or unfortunately, my accountability partner, Hubby, also seemed to have gotten the same message from the devil!

So, when we arrived in Livingstone, we went to Café Zambezi for dinner and decided to eat some nshima for the first time in months! Hubby and I ordered some Zambezi bream while our nanny ordered some beef stew; that was before we ever heard of the word Anthrax by the way! When the food came out, the fish was excitingly huge but turned out to be dry and tasteless so we found ourselves straying to our Nanny’s plate of beef stew and oh my goodness! It was soft, it tasted fresh and the gravy was hitting all the right spots! All I can say is that we might have eaten that beef stew for the rest of our stay in the tourist capital. We also indulged in pizza, chips, ice cream, junk food, name it. The only thing I didn’t eat while I was there is cake. For some reason, I didn’t visit any joint with the kind of pastry that tickles my fancy.

After returning from the short vacation, I found it hard to completely lay off carbs. I was still craving nshima and also eating cake from my favourite joints here in Lusaka. And of course, I decided to wait until November 2, my son’s birthday, before ghosting sugar again. You’re probably wondering at this point whether I gained some of the weight back and I am happy to report I gained zero kgs during my carb loading spree! It came as a shock to me as well because in the past, whenever I would do a low carb diet and then quit, I would gain a substantial amount of weight back after just one week! So, what was different this time? Intermittent fasting! I love it even more now! I’ve previously written about how I started intermittent fasting sometime in March and since then, I have fasted for a period not less than 16 hours every single day! It’s now cemented into my routine and it means, essentially, that I don’t eat more than two meals a day. Even when I was on vacation and misbehaving, I fasted. It’s none negotiable and it no longer feels like a chore. I believe this is why I never gained any weight. Additionally, my activity levels were heightened. I did some HIIT workouts and a lot of walking, that way, I wasn’t having any excess food left to be stored as fat. Even when we visited the Victoria Falls, I had quite the leg workout, having to carry my two and a half-year-old daughter on my back up and down those stairs!

So, that’s the update on where I am right now. I have been misbehaving but I am determined to get back on track. I have 10 more kgs to lose and there’s no relenting! Yes, I fell down but now I am back up with a vengeance! I can’t wait to see where I will be by the end of the year and, please, keep me posted on where you are too! I love hearing your stories.

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