For years, when friends have talked about going low-carb to lose weight, I just laughed. The idea of the Atkins diet, where you basically give up EVERY kind of carb, is way beyond what I can fathom ever doing! After all, I like carbs and it doesn't make logical sense to me to give up all carbs. Any diet that makes you cut out an entire food group doesn't sound healthy to me. Your body needs some carbs to survive. Plus, I always told myself that I can't do low-carb because most of the recipes and ideas for snacks you can find online include fake sweeteners. I have IBS & fake sweeteneres are one of my triggers, so I know that I just can't go there.
The thing is, all of those people who went low-carb lost weight. And they kept it off because they had developed new eating habits by the time they dropped all the weight and so for them, going without (many) carbs just became a way of life. Meanwhile, I kept thinking I could never do that.
But a couple of weeks ago, I decided, with great trepidation, to do it after all. After all, nothing else I've done has worked. I started reading and deciding how I would go about it before I ever 'announced' it to anyone. I came to a few conclusions.
First of all, I really LOVE healthy foods. I love veggies. I love fruit. I love chicken and fish and turkey and shrimp. I love whole grains and yogurt and healthy cereals. And I love to drink water! But the problem is, I also LOVE soda and chips and sweets and pasta and rice and donuts and chocolate and flour tortillas. So I had to figure out a way to make this work without feeling like I was depriving myself completely! After all, a "diet" isn't smart. If you're only changing your eating patterns short term, as soon as you go back to eating "normally", you're going to gain back all the weight. So I knew that if I did this & it worked for me, I needed to find a way that I could do it that would work for me long-term. After all, if I go to someone's house for dinner & they serve something heavy in carbs, I'm not going to be rude & say no! And by golly, when my babies have a birthday, I'm going to have a piece of their cake without any guilt. And once every couple of months, we go out to dinner and I plan to enjoy those meals. So I just had to figure out what my diet would look like on a regular, daily basis in between those 'special events'.
Last Monday was day one.
I have given up soda, chips, pretty much all breads, sweets, cereal, pasta and rice. For now, I'm only eating meats, fruits & veggies, beans/peas, eggs, nuts, yogurt & low-fat milk. Oh, and lots & lots of water.
Day 1 was hard. I was soooooooo hungry all day long. I never felt full, so I snacked. A lot. I think I ate about a million almonds and 3 cups of yogurt that day just trying to make it from one meal to the next.
Day 2 was a little better. I wasn't starving, but I had huge cravings all day long. I would've killed for a Dr. Pepper that evening.
Day 3-5 gradually got better each day. By day 4, the scale showed an almost 4 lb loss, but I think it was a fluke because on day 5, the scale went back to only showing a 2 1/2 lb loss without any change in anything.
Day 6 was ROUGH. I baked some 'healthy' cookies. All natural, no processed stuff, all good healthy carbs in them. But I guess since it was the first taste of anything sweet I'd had all week, it threw me into binge mode & I ate umm, well, a lot of them. And THEN Larry came home from working about 10:00 that night and had a whole pizza. I stood over the box and ate several pieces before I shook my head & realized "whoa....what am I doing??!!" and got rid of the box so it wouldn't tempt me to keep eating.
Day 7 I got back on track, but man oh man, I felt the effects of all those carbs on Day 6!! My stomach was a mess. I felt awful. What a STRONG powerful lesson about what too many carbs do to me!
Today was day 8, the end of the 1st week. The scale is holding steady at 2-3 lbs lost. Praying that number keeps going!
I'll report in next week & let you know how this coming week goes.
10 years ago
No comments:
Post a Comment