It’s been a long, difficult week but there is just one week left to go on my Lenten clean eating diet! This past week, counting the juice fast, I had 5 fasting days and only 2 normal eating days. Amazingly, I didn’t feel completely drained from all of this but at certain points hungry for sure!

Day 37

The next day after the 3-day juice cleanse was a fasting day.

Day 38

Finally, it was a normal eating day!

Day 39

Day 40

Today was a fasting day. My husband joined me in the effort.

Today was also a weigh-in day.

With 5 fasting days in the week, these results don’t surprise me. I am now about 8 pounds under my goal weight. I am not worried about wasting away to nothing, however, because this week I also had to sort out all the Easter candy I purchased and plan the recipes for our Easter celebration. We will be eating well come Sunday and for me it will be all guilt free. I am sure I am going to bounce up again after the diet is over so being a bit under right now is OK with me.

Fortunately, I have just 6 days to go. This is going to be a tough week to get through on a diet. Preparing for major holidays is always major stress. There is so much to do on top of all the everyday stuff. This past week I also calculated that we need to double up on our homeschool math lessons to try to finish the textbooks by June so I have to devote more time there as well. My default is to up my sugar content on such weeks but that is not an option this week. It is a learning experience to cope with all this stress in new ways.

Nutritional News

• Why it’s so hard to stay slim – This was a fascinating article about weight maintenance from a Norwegian nutritionist. She claims that even after you have done all the hard work to lose your excess weight, you need to essentially stay on a diet constantly or your body is going to bounce right back. When commenting on a study of Americans who managed to maintain their weight loss, she observed, ““They ate low-fat foods. The kept track of their calories and stuck to diets of about 1,300 calories for women and 1,700 calories for men. They ate breakfast but stuck to a rather limited variety of foods, also during weekends.” Those low calorie counts were a bit shocking but it is probably close to what I am eating now on this diet. According to the Web MD BMI calculator, I need to eat about 1730 to maintain my weight loss. Curiously, however, when I plug in the figures for 5 pounds heavier or 5 pounds lighter, the difference is only about 60 calories in either direction! That means if I overeat by as little as 60 calories per day, I would see a weight gain of 5 pounds! I am still trying to make sense of all of this weight maintenance information. Still, it gives further proof as to why weight maintenance is so challenging.

May this be a great week for all of us!