Cycles and Patterns

It may be crazy, but now that I'm aware of my hormonal cycle, I really actually like the week my cycle starts. The week before it starts I just want to eat until I feel like I'm going to explode, and I'm moody and so drained. That week of the month, my resolve is at it's lowest. I typically do pretty good during the work week, if I honestly feel the need to eat between meals I at least have low carb, keto-friendly foods in the house so I can still eat more but stay on track. Last week I had a baggie of pork rinds one day, some salted peanuts another and some roasted pumpkin seeds too. Cheese is always on hand as well. Last week at work ended up being really stressful for me, just for the nature of the job and some things came up that no one else in my small team of 3 feels comfortable handling so I dealt with it and it ended up getting super messy. There were miscommunications and I got caught in the middle. I had Friday off for my mammogram so Thursday after my husband and I were done with work we headed to a brand new local restaurant to try it out. I had a White Claw because it's only 2 little carbs and I really felt the need to de-stress somehow. This bar and grill had typical bar food, so I ended up having a burger and fries. The burger was overcooked and the fries were double fried and really crispy. It was OK, not great but they are new so one can hope they will improve. Friday after my mammogram my husband proposed we go for a little drive and have lunch in a town just south of ours on Lake Michigan. This place had more of a selection of food but I just had a simple chicken avocado wrap and fries. See a pattern here? That evening he wanted to go out again. We both were not very hungry so we had a chicken quesadia and it didn't come with a side so at least there was one meal without fries! We were saying how our bodies were craving something fresher but all of the placed to eat in our area are bars that happen to serve food so it's all basically burgers and fries, chicken sandwich, BLT and the like. I had healthier choices but if it's between a salad and a burger or wrap it's hard for me to pick the salad, especially when progesterone is coursing through me and I want to eat the world. We went grocery shopping Saturday and If you can believe it, we decided to go out to lunch after. Another burger and fries but this time the food was so so good. Sunday I ate clean and made a family dinner if Udon noodles with steak and broccoli with sesame sauce. It was also not keto but felt so much better in my body than all that fried food. The novelty is wearing thin and my husband and I agreed that 1 or two times per weekend is plenty, this past weekend was just different because we had extra days off together and honestly it's too cold to do much outside and mostly everything is closed for the season. We live in a summer tourist town so during winter a lot of things have unusual hours or close completely. I was surprised when I got on the scale this morning and saw 180, virtually the same place I hovered all last week. This week should be the start of my cycle so I am eating super low carb and fasting longer. I have still been really frustrated that I got down to 177 last month but haven't been able to get back down to that or lower, so I have decided to experiment with two things, one is to have no sweeteners for the next 10 days and one is to make a dramatic cut in my dairy consumption to see if I lose weight. When I was losing rapidly last month I was only using sweeteners during my eating window and eliminated them while fasting. I also ate a lot less dairy that week. I will have a little heavy cream in my coffee this week, but no cheese or sour cream on my food. If I see some good weight loss I will then try adding dairy back in for a week to see if I gain, then experiment with the liquid stevia drops I have been habitually adding to my water for years. I am also not chewing gum for this 10 day stretch because it also has sweeteners that can affect your gut and spike insulin. It is going to be a tough challenge but I want to see if a few simple changes can help me on this journey. I know I don't have to give these things up forever but I can use them more sparingly than I have been if it helps. After I get that figured out I'm going to try to start cutting back the caffeine to one cup of coffee per day. I have a feeling, if nothing else, my body will respond to getting back to non-fried food this week, and I plan to keep my weekend squeaky clean next weekend, even of we go out.