Five Days to the Forbidden Fruit

Well, I’m on day five of my low-carbohydrate diet and I have already lost the two pounds I was fretting about.  Frankly, I’m almost disappointed.  Given my rigorous calculations, I was sure I’d have to put in a whole two weeks- I don’t know what to do with myself now.  To maintain a sense of agency amid this perplexing turn of events, I’ve made a list.  A list of high-carb grocery items I shall hasten to obtain? Not quite; I will make such a list as soon as I can ensure my two-pound weight loss is legitimate, that I have indeed regained homeostasis.  No, the present list is of several hypotheses that could potentially explain my observation of a two-pound weight loss.  Let us examine them one by one in the hope of identifying the most robust:

1) My current weight of x is the product of measurement error; I have not actually lost two pounds.

 Possible, yes- yet not likely.  I weighed myself on two separate scales yesterday, the first of which placed me at my exact preferred weight, right down to the '.0'. (Who among us is prepared to deny the beauty of whole foods or whole numbers?)  The second scale actually placed me 1.2 lbs under my preferred weight, which would put my total weight loss since Sunday at 3.2 lbs and call for a homemade batch of buttercream icing and perhaps a loaf of banana bread.  Yet this second reading seems a bit extreme- and I have less reason to trust it, as it was obtained from a novel scale. The first reading, however, is from my usual scale at the gym, which has been telling me my weight several times a week for the last twenty months; I have every reason to trust its opinion that I have lost two pounds. But isn’t it still possible that the novel scale is totally out to lunch and the scale at the gym was randomly buggered yesterday?  Yes, it is possible. 

2)  My weight of x +2, obtained just prior to my invocation of the emergency low-carb diet, was the product measurement error; I never actually gained two pounds.  

I guess this is also a possibility, though I was damn sure even before weighing myself that I had slathered on at least a couple of bars of Crisco.  As I explained on Monday, I was recently forced by the winds of fate to take 8 days off from the gym, a funny coincidence as I had also taken to eating frozen cupcakes, unapologetically and most often while wearing my fluffy slippers.  I should also confess, though I’ve heretofore been discreet about it, that I spent most of June following the Second Best Available Diet for Weight Gain. It was a project initially inspired by two oversized, solid bars of Lindt chocolate (one milk, one dark) and a box of Neuhaus truffles, which I received as a gift from London Heathrow.  I love solid Lindt, particularly the dark, so I quickly took to eating at least three squares every single day.  At the same time, I couldn’t decide if the Neuhaus truffles were good enough to justify their Euro-utrageous price tag so, like any science-lover, I ate as many flavors as possible at different times of the day and night to come to a conclusion.

Subsequently, in mid-June, perhaps as a result of my persistent chocolate consumption, I got a hankering for milk.  But not just any milk.  Homogenized milk! And so it goes that for a stretch of ten days I drank two to three glasses of whole milk every 24 hours, more often than not with Nesquik Chocolate Syrup, as, due to my constant consumption of truffles and bar chocolate in the same period, the milk otherwise tasted bland in comparison. Ah, I’ll never forget the look of incredulity in my roommate’s eyes when I polished off a giant bowl of Cookies n’ Cream ice cream, only to get up and prepare myself an ice-cold mug of homo milk with chocolate sauce.  Of course, it was shortly after this event that I started to recognize I had begun to seriously abuse myself.  But that’s when, through no fault of my own, I got the Big Cupcake!

With the introduction of the cupcakes into the above regimen, I felt safe in saying I was officially following the 2nd best diet for weight gain.  (Of course, now you’re curious now what is the Very Best Available Diet for Weight Gain.  I will tell you, as it is in fact the diet I followed in Paris last Christmas for a period of 16 days:  a daily breakfast of a two-foot long baguette with butter, Nutella, Vache Qui Rit, and jam, paired with an 18-oz carafe of chocolat chaud; an extended-lunch routine involving the bi-hourly intake of any hot, milk-based drink with sugar, be it plain, chocolate, or coffee-flavored; and a standard dinner of a tablecloth-sized crêpe stuffed with a melted wheel of Emmental cheese.  This diet resulted in an empirically-verified gain of five pounds, of which I rid myself in six weeks through frenetic exercise once back in Vancouver.)

In short, I was pretty damn sure I had gained two pounds. 

3) It is absurd to take seriously any weight gain within a margin of two pounds; even the intake of one high-salt meal may cause one’s weight to appear higher by two pounds when in fact nothing has happened but water retention. You’re an ignoramus and a hysteric!

A valid point.  See above.

4) My two-pound weight loss is true, yet reflects the disintegration of muscle, not fat; I have missed so many workouts as a result of my stupid back injury that I am simply in way worse shape and I have nothing to be proud of. 

This is an extremely robust hypothesis, though I hate to admit it.  I still have to be careful at the gym not to exacerbate my injury and I’ve hardly been doing a third of what usually do- it’s almost a scientific impossibility that I haven’t lost muscle.  But how to know how much muscle has been lost compared to fat? And where does that leave me with respect to how to proceed menu-wise? This is my most annoying hypothesis- I almost wish I hadn’t thought of it.

5) Extremely low-carb diets are dangerously effective.  I actually lost 2 pounds in four days, a direct result of eating under 20 grams of carbohydrates per day, causing my body to burn stored fat in lieu of glycogen and putting me in a state of ketosis, not to mention constant thirst. 

This is probably the case, regardless of how much muscle I may have lost, and it is starting to freak me out.  Though my drastically low-carb diet seems kind of healthy compared to my June regimen- especially since I have been feasting on broccoli, bean sprouts, turkey and tuna- I really am overly thirsty and I am starting to crave fruit.  Plus, I’m grossed out by the quantity of mayonnaise, butter, cheese, and heavy cream I’ve ingested in the last few days.  Nonetheless, I do feel like I’m back to weight x (as evidenced by the fact I am wearing white pants today).  Thus, Hypothesis #5 is probably the most robust, though it could be taken alongside Hypothesis #4.

Maybe I’ll weigh myself again today just to be sure. 

Or maybe I'll leave immediately and purchase the eleven ingredients for my fresh, summer recipe idea, Forbidden Fruit Salad.  After all, it's 31°C in Vancouver and I'm wearing white pants.