Okay, so I've been eating the Atkins way for almost 8 months (since July 1st). I've lost serious weight, dropped major inches, and am now wearing sizes that were once just a fantasy that I'd have that I was thin and in shape. By all means, I love the results. I'm down 30 pounds and I've gone from a size 14/16 to a 6/8. Amazing.
But my god, I miss carbs and sugar. I don't talk about it cause I want to show that I do indeed have "stick-to-it-evness." It's not that I approach life half-assed, it's just that the paranoid schizo person who lives in the remote reaches of my mind is convinced there are some people that would love nothing more than to see me fail. Because me as a chubby, cranky, crabby BITCH fits into the little hole they've got pegged for me. I've also never even attempted a diet before because I am so deathly afraid of failure and being less than who I can be. I was and still am, scared.
It took me longer than the regular Induction period (2 weeks) for me to enter ketosis and start losing weight. I gotta admit, when I wasn't seeing any results at all I was discouraged and ready to quit. The paranoid schizo person and Jake (who, incidentally, is not that paranoid schizo person, believe it or not) kept me keepin' on. Turns out I'm even more carb resistant than your average Jane (a nice kick in the ass from the powers that be), so eating 20 carbs a day was getting me nowhere fast. I decided to try dropping it to 15 net carbs a day, and suddenly things started working and clothes got baggier.
I mean the results are undeniable. I am thinner now than I was in high school. Yet I still look in the mirror and see myself at 180 pounds, flabby, doughy, and unattractive. People tell me all the time that I look so good and I seriously don't see it. Yet I do get satisfaction from wearing jeans that are sized 6. I've gotten used to eating the Atkins way, and its pretty easy for the most part.
And yet every time I drive by a McDonald's I fantasize for a moment about hitting the drive thru and getting a 2 cheeseburger meal with fries. I eat McD's double cheese burgers all the time, minus the buns. But I do miss those buns. The biting into the pillowy bread. The crispy saltiness of McD's fries fresh out of the fryer and almost too hot to eat.
I used to think that sugar was my major weakness, Jake said I was probably more of a carb addict than a sugar junkie. And as much as I hate to admit it, he was right. I fantasize about pizza and pasta, hamburger buns and Cinnabons, rice and Chinese food in general. Fried foods with breading. I have never been a big sliced bread person so I don't miss that so much. But it's just about everything else. Mashed potatoes with tons of beef gravy. Hell, I'm not even Jewish, and I'd kill for a latke with applesauce.
At the root of Atkins is a choice to eat foods that are lower in carbs because those foods are healthier overall. It's about losing weight easily and developing a lifelong strategy about eating. Most of us have twisted relationships with food. We cook things because it reminds us of people we used to know. We eat to comfort ourselves. How many childhood memories are like mine, sweetened with chocolate chip cookies (my mom used to buy the best ones from Shoprite), cake, ice cream, candy, Ring Dings and Yodles and Reese's peanut butter cups? Why do we do this to ourselves? Just because we don't have to leave camp to hunt for our food and harvest the crops, why do we choose to eat CRAP?
It's funny that Atkins works so well because you eat what the medical community has been pounding into our heads for generations; fat bad, carbs ok. My mom is starting the Induction phase of Atkins soon, and she can't wrap her mind around the idea that you can eat bacon and butter and cream and burgers and still lose weight. At least she gets that she needs to still eat veggies, preferrably green ones. That's another thing that slays me. People go on Atkins and have to stop because their numbers go through the roof. I mean it's not rocket science that eating 5 pounds of bacon with no salad or anything is NOT good for you.
So that's a sampling of what's on my mind today. I'd appreciate any feedback.
I'm becoming accustomed to the fact that
I will probably always crave carbs.
Especially when I think of those McDonald's french fries.
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8 comments:
Cudos for you - you are doing a great job. I am proud of you for sticking with it :)
Sweetie, I tried to give you some feed back but they wanted me to fill out shit and I can't have anything coming to this computer that may be seen by my bosses. So I will give you my feed back here. You may have a hard time "seeing" it but you look FABULOUS!!!! Enjoy it, a great body doesn't last forever (trust me lol). As far as failing goes, why are you
so afraid. Everybody fails at some point in their life. It won't kill
you and it sometimes helps you grow. The only way you can truly fail is by not trying things and so far you have never been afraid to jump in and try stuff. Enjoy who you are (which is a very caring, loving, and beautiful girl)and let life take you on it's ride. Love You!!!!!
Love, Aunt Kathie
Keep in mind that I'm writing to you here as I would someone on my board, and not as your boyfriend. It might therefore be a bit more stern or frank than you'd normally expect.
I've said it before, but you're likely craving carbs because of the fake foods you're eating. You haven't given up the ghost and decided to eat a nice big omelet for breakfast - you want foods that contain derivatives of the foods that set off your metabolism. You don't want to fry your chicken straight in butter (which is awesomely delicious, especially if you take off the skin and deep fry it in the butter first so it's nice and crispy), you want to use breading that's derived from the foods that set off cravings. You don't want to have cheeseburgers or fried peperoni dipped in blue cheese for a snack, you want the bars with sugar alcohols that set off cravings. Same goes for fake pancakes, etc.
When you clean out your system from that stuff, you honestly do not have cravings, apart from psychological ones - I don't know anyone who does. You are not some physiological anomaly whose body is completely different from everyone else on earth...everyone gets it in degrees. Just because your physiology doesn't damn you to have the cravings at the same extreme level of intensity as someone else (like me) does - making you less likely to fall prey to them as readily - doesn't mean that you're not prone to having those cravings get set off by eating foods that trigger them. I believe that earlier on in the diet you were more craving-free, and I think that that's because you were eating more cleanly to be in line with my needs. As it stands now, you're better able to control the cravings than I am, but when I was eating that stuff with you I had cravings again, I was hungry again - it messed up my system. I mean, I regained all that weight because what's going on in your system was going on in mine, but probably 100 times stronger because of my genetic/psychological background. I honestly could not avoid eating those fucking bagels - I was having 2-3 a day. This is what I wrote in my journal about it:
"I've not been eating sugar, I've not been eating starches, but I HAVE been eating too many "low carb" products - things that I KNOW BETTER THAN TO DO. Things like "low carb" bagels, "low carb" bars, "low carb" sauces, too many berries, too much cream, etc. etc. etc. I KNOW about carb creep. I know it, I've read everyone else's posts about doing it, I know better, but I did it anyway.
I am an addict. I really just can not moderate this shit. I wish I could, I like to say that I can, but I can not. I can not have one or two low carb bagels a week - I find it hard not to have two or three in a day. I can not only have a bar "once in a while" - when I have one one day, I have an incredibly difficult time stopping myself the next day. Granted, the net carbs from each one isn't bad, but in total it's been more and more, every day, for months, and it has resulted in my retracing pretty much all of my 2007 losses.
...
Another driving factor has been believing my own press. I think that I think too much of my weight loss accomplishments, when in fact I have essentially done nothing. I have undone - and not even entirely - something that most people don't have to deal with. This "accomplishment" has made me cocky, has made me take things for granted. I've said, "I can gain a couple of pounds - I've lost so much weight! I'm the weight loss guy! I can lose it again!" I've said, "I've got iron will! I can have a bar, or a low-carb bagel! I lost all this weight! I'll be fine!" And that's bullshit, because I'm also the person who got to be so unimaginably fat in the first place - so fat that at the age of 26 I had trouble using a public restroom, trouble going to a movie, for fuck's sake, trouble walking up a few flights of stairs. I am deeply, terribly flawed, and the thing that gave me success was being cognizant of that and dealing with it. It is not because I'm great, it's because I'm aware of how truly, undeniably flawed I am."
Judy, who's one of the most successful LC people on the board both in terms of getting the weight off and in terms of keeping it off, said this about the bagels:
"And just so you know....I too, have to be very, very careful when it somes to any food that is made with flour....its such a slippery slope, even if its called low carb bagel, its still made from flour!! evil stuff I tell ya!! so my rule for when I do have that treat...is just one and never again the next day!!! and then only once per month."
and later she wrote:
"Originally Posted by Jake
But I've been doing WAY too many frankenfoods - things that are only LC in name because someone with a chemistry set figured a loophole in the rules. Too many things with too many ingredients
I think that you've hit upon something here Jake.....many people fall prey to the ol' low carb marketing scheme. "If it says its 5 net carbs...thats all I have to worry about" , not which rung of the OWL ladder those 5 net carbs fall under.
I've seen it too many times to count but there are those who will eat up to 5 low carb tortillas in a day...thinking that they are only eating 25 net carbs...give me a frigging break!! Its still flour from grain and IME, grain is something that needs to be in as close to its whole form as possible or not eaten. I did not eat any flour at all until I was 5 lbs from my goal weight.
Flour from grain, even low carb flour, does give us something that we won't get from other foods. When I went to FAA= Food Addicts Anonymous, their food plan is No Sugar, No Flour, No Wheat....their thinking is that these are the most highly addictive of all. I get it now about flour and wheat as they are very easy to keep eating and eating....and then eat some more. I get it about sugar too but thats not my issue as I abuse foods from flour."
(she likes emoticons... lol)
There are so many really great foods that you CAN eat, and I don't think you focus enough on *that*. Steaks, green vegetables, bacon - bacon deep fried in butter and wrapped around pieces of sharp cheddar. Omelets with lots of cheese and meat. Rev rolls. Berries. Salads with lots of dressing and maybe chicken or steak mixed in. Tomatoes stuffed with cheese. Omelets with hollandaise sauce. The list goes on and on and on.
In your cooking, instead of focusing on cooking things that are delicious with the ingredients that are totally legal - and that you could eat until you burst if you wanted to - you've often focused on making replica foods. "How can I make chili that I can eat" instead of "how can I use bacon, steak and cheese to make something tasty?" I mean, I appreciate it, and I reap the benefits by eating your really tasty food, but it might be an indication that what you're doing isn't learning to eat a new way but instead trying in many ways to keep doing the same old thing that got you where you were in the first place, which was overweight and not happy with your body. I'd imagine that you could also make super-tasty things that were totally legal if you focused on doing that more than figuring out loopholes in the game. I say it over and over and over again to the people on my board - focus on what you CAN eat, not what you can't. Don't look for loopholes, look for opportunities. Eating like this you can indulge in tons of stuff that pre-Atkins you'd never dream of, or would have thought of as being totally terrible for you. Focus on how freeing *that* is instead of how you can't eat the crap that just makes you hungry anyway - it's crap, even if it does provide a temporary surge to your nervous system.
I am not someone who tells anyone else what to eat, and my intention is not to control your food intake. I'm just giving you the information straight, as I see it - you can do with it as you'd like. I'm just telling you from my experience and the experience of all the people I've come in contact with in relation to the diet that this is the conclusion I've drawn as to why you may be having this conflict right now.
-jake.
Also, as long as you're not eating carbs, your numbers do not go up - bad numbers, at least. Positive ones, like good cholesterol, probably still will. Bad numbers come down, pretty much universally.
People's bad numbers tend to go up because they continue eating too many carbs AND ALSO eat the fat. You can't do that. Or they eat low carb for 3 days every once in a while, which is essentially the same thing. It's a lifestyle (as Ali knows).
I advocate eating salad and vegetables, obviously, because I believe in eating the diet as written, and I think those are healthy things to eat. But there are a *lot* of people out there who do what's known as "meat and eggs" as their diets, and they survive just fine, and lose lots of weight. It's when people mix not-really low carb and high fat that they have problems.
That problem generally occurs when people try to do low fat and low carb together because they refuse to buy into the diet - they can not believe that eating fat can be healthy. On a mini-rant, that's because of the brainwashing that's been going on in this country about diet (for those reading this who don't know what I'm talking about, see the book Good Calories, Bad Calories or watch a lecture by Gary Taubes for more on the flawed science of nutrition - he's a NY Times writer and has won multiple science journalist awards, he's not some crackpot). People who do try to do low fat and low carb together generally fail because they aren't satisfied and receive neither the nutrition nor the satisfaction that eating fat provides.
Holy crap I'm verbose.
Ok yeah, you and your boyfriend need to stop writing these long ass posts to eachother, thats called dinner talk lol. N E Way, kool da Atkins thing, you always looked good so now you look good as a crack head lmao I love you. I wanted to try that diet but the book was too long to read and my food has weird names from different countries so I don't know what category it would fit into. Hahahaha Your awesome and you never fail at things so why worry :-)
Congratulations!
-Alfalfa, 165pds today, gonna try Atkins, I miss looking like a crack head :-P
Hey girl... You always were good at taking your head and wallowing in it... I just started back on atkins again but I understand from before and now that those wantings will always be there. In any lifestyle you still have to be able to "treat" yourself as long as its in moderation. If you cant do it in moderation then I think that is something that needs looking at or talking about. A diet is a temporary thing a lifestyle is something you want to make who you are from now on...
You are a beautiful woman, inside and out... i've seen you when you thought you were "flabby" and i still found you beautiful, but you and I both wanted that "highschool" feeling if not the look that we had about our bodies. I envy you for getting there but I'm estatic for you! Hang in there hun... you should revel in yourself as a whole not peices and numbers!
Hugs! Aly
Can tell I had a teething baby all night - i wrote cudos instead of kudos - lol
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