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Old Thu, Sep-07-17, 14:51
khrussva's Avatar
khrussva khrussva is offline
Say NO to Diabetes!
Posts: 8,671
 
Plan: My own - < 30 net carbs
Stats: 440/228/210 Male 5' 11"
BF:Energy Unleashed
Progress: 92%
Location: Central Virginia - USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sniggle
Probably the more important question is, at this point, can you 'sin' just once, and then easily get back on the path to your goal?

That is the question. The only way to know for sure is to try it. But let's put the question another way... If I make it OK to cheat every now and then, will I ever reach my goal weight and/or maintain the weight I have lost? By the statistics, the answer to this alternative question is... probably not. Some can do it; most will not -- especially those of us that started this WOE morbidly obese. Will a single cheat knock you out of ketosis? Maybe, maybe not. Will cheating knock you off of your diet? It likely will. So the question of being knocked out of ketosis is kind of moot. If you get sucked back into eating your old diet, then you won't be in ketosis.

I cheated time and time again on failed diets of the past 30 years. Most times it didn't derail the diet completely, but it did revive cravings and that made sticking to the program tough to do. Eventually I'd cheat one time too many and that would be it. My old WOE would suck me back in and the regain was on. This WOE is made harder by cheating. If you want this WOE to get easier over time, then don't cheat.

Have I been perfect? No. Sometimes I eat too much. Sometimes I eat too many carbs. I have even gained weight eating nothing but OP food. But I didn't eat any off-plan food for the first couple of years. I had no planned or unplanned cheats. It took months, but eventually sticking with my LC program became easy. Eating LC didn't feel like dieting. It became my norm -- simply how I eat. Time on plan did that. 5 weeks is not a long time. Your brain is still full of strings tying you to many of your old favorite carby foods. Dabbling in them at this stage will only revive cravings and jumping right back on plan will not be as easy as you might think. I read a lot of journals here on this forum in the early days of my journey. People who don't cheat succeed. Every diet 'crash & burn' started with a cheat. For every 100 members who sign up here committed to making THIS TIME the one where they reach goal, how many actually do it? Not many. I have only been on this forum for a couple of years and I could give you dozens of names of members that were doing great - chose to cheat - and are now are either among the disappeared or part of the "I'm back" crowd after another regain event.

So my answer to your question is... I wouldn't recommend cheating with off-plan food choices. If you really want to reach goal then you need to make low carb your WOE. So stick with your program. Perhaps you can indulge a little by having a few more carbs than your normally do. Just stick with OP foods during your celebration. I've done this with LC cheesecake or home-made LC ice cream or frozen yogurt. Let the compromise come in the carb count - not the food choices.

That said, I did a little experimentation with "cheating" after I reached goal. I ate a slice of banana cream pie after dinner one day and ate some chocolate éclairs after dinner the next day. This was total junk food -- 100% off plan. It was a bonafide cheat. I wasn't craving these things. I was doing it more out of curiosity than anything else. I considered this experiment a risky move, but also a learning experience. I wanted to see how I would react. When I was younger I seemed to be able to cheat on the diet occasionally and get away with it. As the years went by, losing and regaining the same pounds over and over again, sticking with a diet became increasingly more difficult. Starting a new diet was tough enough, but recovering from a cheat once on a diet became nearly impossible. Dieting + cheating = misery. I wanted to know if I would respond differently given my current circumstances. This time I had lost all of the weight. I was no longer obese. I had resolved my insulin resistance, hypertension and my diabetes. I had broken the ties with my old favorite foods and I had resolved to make eating LC a permanent lifestyle. Cheating on pure junk in the past would always revive the crave monster inside me. Would it still be the same now that I lost the weight and reclaimed my health? That was the question that I wanted answered.

The result of that "cheat" experiment was that I did get away with it and I did so fairly easily. It was like the diets of my teens & 20's. I could cheat one day and be back on plan the next without too much trouble. So why the change? These "cheats" would have been nearly impossible to recover from a few years ago? I think resolving my insulin resistance had a lot to do with it. I don't get the crazy high BG spikes and crashes from eating junky carbs as I did when I was not metabolically healthy. Another likely reason: Those foods I cheated on are not part of my current food rotation and I was not craving them. This cheat experiment was several months ago and I have not had a slice of pie or a pastry since. I wasn't cheating as a reward or a celebration. I wasn't cheating to break up the monotony of eating "diet food" everyday. As expected, the cheat treats were tasty -- too tasty. But there was no 'pull' to have them before the experiment and the aftermath didn't throw me for a loop. I was well-established in the LC WOE -- 2+ years on plan. Apparently, these two after dinner cheats were not enough to knock me off of this foundation.

So the strangest part of this 'experiment' is that I learned that I may be able to deviate from the plan on occasion -- but I choose not to. I have enough trouble keeping my eating under control with the foods that I do consider on plan. I know that if I started throwing off-plan goodies into the mix on a regular basis I would come to regret that decision.
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