I haven't read all the responses because this thread is long and I'm not patient enough right now, but here's my take on this.

1) If she's hungry, she should eat. REAL food, and plenty of fat. Fat is a hunger suppressant (which is why you can never get enough low-fat food), and very important to this WOE. If she's limiting her fat at all (and those frankenfoods don't tend to have great ratios), this may be her problem.

2) Gotta, gotta, gotta let go of the fake food. At least for a while. Let her give it at least a week without artificial food and sweeteners and take it from there. All of that stuff will mess with metabolism and appetite.

3) Her irritability may be a blood sugar issue, which isn't helped by those fake foods (I know I'm ragging on them, but I learned my lesson the hard way). The steadier her blood sugar, the better she should feel.

4) If not blood sugar, then her temperament may well be influenced by the bombardment of tons of extra hormones from her stored fat as it is released into her system. Also, if she hasn't had a spectacular diet before losing weight (and it sounds from her raging sweet tooth like it was a lot like mine--not great), there may be other stored things coming out.

5) LC is fabulous for fertility (except in herbivores), so you've found a great solution. I hope you don't have to wait too long, but I also hope that she is healthy and vibrant for her pregnancy. Speaking as a pregnant woman, baby-growing takes a LOT out of a woman, and it's best to start with a healthy slate.

As far as defining frankenfoods, I would first be sure to get rid of ANYTHING with artificial sweeteners and sugar alcohols. That's huge. Also, all the common allergy/food sensitivity foods, like wheat, corn, peanuts etc. Look for a list of common allergens and don't buy anything with those things in them. You may even have to look into giving up dairy (I know, it sounds impossible, and I'm grateful I've never had to do it myself). Real, whole food looks like vegetables and meat and stuff, not like sawdust wrapped in "chocolate-flavoured confection."

And the most important thing for not gaining the weight back is not returning to the lifestyle that wound you up where you (that's a general "you," as in the dieter) are in the first place. If you're losing weight, the diet's working. If you put it back on, that means that you've done something you shouldn't, not that the diet didn't work. Drives me nuts to hear that "diets don't work" because the (general) purpose of a diet is to lose weight, not to keep it off--that's your job.

Anyway, that's my couple of cents, fwiw. I wish you both the best on your journey toward parenthood! Happy trying!

Heh. Well, I read through it, and it looks like I just reiterated what had already been said. I have to say that I am impressed with the encouraging responses you've gotten. The people here are fabulous!

One thing I forgot--insatiable hunger can also be a sign of an impending whoosh. You mentioned she's been whooshing, and it reminded me. If you're hungry, by all means grab something (LC) and chow down!

Thanks for the encouraging words Alopex, I'm trying to boost our fat as much as I can without getting stuff so greasy it's disgusting and it seems to be working fairly well, but we will have to see. I know that when ever we talk about potential snacking foods I always look to see if I can make them fatter.

I've also been making our own mayo (2 eggs, 1.25c olive oil, 2T lemon juice, .25t salt) for the last few weeks, since all the commercial stuff seems to have trace amounts of sugar, and load our meat salads with it 3-4 big tablespoons minimum.



I don't think we have a big problem with dairy, or any of the other 'usual suspects'. We eat quite a bit of cream and cheese, and have been loosing so it doesn't seem likely.
Grains are pretty much gone as part of getting rid of the high carb foods, but she has been eating a few more peanuts lately, but not excessively. (We finally found that BJ's has boxes of the 'single serving' Planter's roast peanuts which is good for 'portion control'

Right now the key thing I'm working on getting rid of is the artificial sweeteners, and I hope that will help alot.

BTW, on the CPAP front, UPS stopped by the house today w/ a package from the place that does her supplies, so hopefully I'll get a better night's sleep tonight

Gooserider

ITU about the grease issue. There's only so much you can handle! I applaud your willingness to make your own mayo! Well, maybe I'm willing, but just lazy. I've wanted to try it for a long time, though.

I'm glad about the dairy. I don't know if I could stop eating cheese for the rest of my life! And I enjoy snacking on nuts too. I put pecans in my full fat yogurt as a snack.

Good luck on the sweeteners! That's probably the hardest part, but the most rewarding. The longer she can go without sweetened things, the more her tastebuds will adjust to the natural sweetness of foods. I wish you both the best of luck with that.

Thanks... I actually find the mayo to be pretty simple now that I've experimented with the different technology options to find the best technique. Also since we go through a LOT of the stuff, I make it in triple batches, so I don't need to make it more than once every couple of weeks.

We have a Kitchen-Aid brand food processor, which is a unit I HIGHLY reccomend, as it has a real solid design and stout motor that stand up to heavy duty processing duty. I used to have a Cusinart 'LaMachine' that would walk all over the counter and bog down when I tried grating hard cheese, or do other demanding tasks. The K-A machine doesn't move, barely vibrates unless it does something wierd like get a big chunk of something stuck on the processor blade, and does NOT bog.

The key to making mayo is to mix everything else (except possibly some spices) and then, while constantly mixing, add the oil VERY slowly. The K-A processor has a two part food pusher, in part so you can work with a narrow bore tube if what your making does better that way. The inner part of the tube has a tiny hole in the bottom of it that is looks like it was designed for slow adding of ingredients.

So I put the big work bowl on the base, with the metal propellor blade. I break the eggs into a bowl (to check for spoilage and or shell bits) then add them to the work bowl, along with everything but the oil. I measure the oil seperately in a 4c measure.
Then I turn the processor on, and after a couple of moments to let the eggs and lemon juice blend, I pour the oil into the pusher tube so it just dribbles out the bottom into the churning egg mixture. After all the oil has blended in, I may add some extra spices and let it blend for a few minutes extra.

I then transfer it into a bottle, its a bit more than a quart, so I use a spare 5lb honey jar, which is nice since the wide open top is easier to pour into and get the stuff back out later I actually find the prep and cleanup probably take me as long or longer than the actual production.

Gooserider

The concept of mixing fat or protein with carbs is popular for this very reason. The theory is that the fat/protein slow down the carb processing which flattens out the insulin response. If the SAs are triggering the cravings, then eating fats/proteins along with them should help.

One other related concept... If you do get an insulin spike, one method to reduce it back down to a flat level pretty quickly is to exercise, especially strength training. When your muscles are pushed harder than normal they burn up the carbs pretty quickly. With exercising, always start out slowly and build up. Exercise is a real help with this way of life, no matter how much fat we have to lose. Maybe a short walk to start with to build up. I started out with the 1 mile Walk Away the Pounds video which is great for a beginner.

As a Julia Child fan I am for home-made mayo with my whole heart. I am not talking against it. Only one remark. Please be very careful storing home-made mayo (with raw eggs in it) for more than one week...

My best wishes for both of you to your new WOL. (I have read your journal, you both are doing great. )
Eva

Never got into Julia Child, as she always seemed a bit pretentious to me (but tastes differ!) but I appreciate the advice about the mayo. I do try to be very careful about keeping it refrigerated at all times, and otherwise doing the 'food safety thang' It actually looks like the triple batch will only last about 10 days or so. Making it isn't really the problem, it's just that the setup and clean up time is so much, plus the food processor parts take half the top shelf in the dishwasher. (AFAIK, Julia never had to do her own dishes )

I appreciate your comment about the journal as well, we are both new to this, and it is good to get the confirmation from more experienced folks that we really are managing as well as we think we are.




Glad to hear we are on the right track about the insulin spikes. If getting rid of the artificial sweeteners doesn't solve the issue (it hasn't so far, but it's only been a few days) I'll probably suggest letting them back as long as she mixes them with something else.

The exercise approach sounds like a good idea except that most of her problems with hunger are hitting her at work, and doing power lifts with a keyboard just isn't going to get it She also at present isn't very good at walking, though she's gotten noticeably better in the past few weeks. She goes to her health club about 3x week, and is currently doing 10 minutes on the treadmill ~ 1.8 mph, plus stationary bike, a couple of exercise machines, and arm weights. I'd like her to get into doing some more strength type work as my reading leads me to think it's the best thing to help her build up muscle mass, which will help her with the weight issues, but it's been a fairly tough sell so far.

Gooserider

Thanks for that info MoonDansyr, it is really good to hear a confirmation that there is some sort of medical evidence that the AS stuff might be our problem. I do have a couple of questions that you might be able to answer, or ask your Dr. about.

1. Is there any sort of pointer to a source for the study he showed you? Preferably online, but possibly even on paper. MGW likes to read these sorts of things for herself, she isn't a medical person, but she used to work in a medical library so she knows how to follow the language. She has even occasionally pointed her MD's at new research relevant to treating things that ailed her!

2. What about MGW's experience of not getting negative side effects if eating the AS as part of a snack / meal that contains other 'real' carbs of a neutral or good sort, for instance eating a small AS candy bar along with a package of nuts or a hunk of cheese?

While I agree with you about minimizing the use of frankenfoods as much as possible, I would hate to have to totally eliminate the use of AS and other such as they are good once in a while to add variety and / or make special occasion foods possible.

I may also see about adding in fruits of some sort, although it seems a real nusiance that the types of fruits that Atkin's allows and the allowed portions are such that it's a challenge to get them without having them spoil before one can finish them.

Gooserider

I have done some poking in Pubmed about artificial sweeteners and insulin and everything I've looked at there was no correlation. But, I hear this quoted so often, I'd like to see some research as well.

I think sweet food is easier to over consume than non-sweet food because we just like it more and it tends to have more calories (from fat in our case)! I'll try to find that original purdue study and look at it. Sometimes what we hear goes through the biases of the reporter and is nothing like what the original researchers concluded.

I kind of find this bogus though. Their claim is that our bodies can accurately gauge how many calories we've taken in and that using artificial sweeteners muck this up.

If that's the case, how'd I get over weight eating real sugar? My feelings of satiety weren't any different when I eat cheesecake with AS as opposed to sugar. Except that overall, eating LC seems to have improved my satiety and I tend to stop eating sooner.

What I think is true for sugar and AS is that it makes food extremely attractive and desirable to eat. So if you aren't able to control your portions using an objective like calories, you might over eat simply because it tastes too good, not because it makes you hungrier. But that would be just as true with sugar.

http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/html...s.research.html (a little better write up of the study)

The second test, where they gave the rats either something the consistency of milk or the consistency of pudding to see which they'd eat more of, I'm wondering what they used to thicken the pudding one. If it were fiber, that might very well explain why the rats at more of the more liquid stuff.

Another thing, and they even mention it in their summary, is that they hypthesize that the brain might eventually recalibrate to more accurately gauge calories in artificially sweetened food.

First we are not all alike and one person's results will not necessarily be another's.

If you really want to check this, invest in an inexpensive blood glucose monitoring kit. I found one at drugstore.com by AccuChek for $20.00. Have your GF eat SF candy and check her blood glucose every 15 minutes for an hour or two. Then have her eat SF candy with fat and/or protein (like nuts) and do the same check. Then you will KNOW if SF products spike her insulin and you will KNOW if adding fat/protein will make it the same, better, or worse.

On a post about yogurt, one lady used her mother as a test subject as her mother was diabetic and responded consistently to carbs. She found that full fat yougurt caused a spike in the blood sugar but adding full fat cream to the yogurt did not cause a spike. Interesting stuff.

Hiya, I have been reading through this thread with interest. Hi Goose, and Hi MG

I haven't really read all of the posts, just the relevent bits - your posts goose and that of your girlfriend. Firstly, you both sound lovely I'm really happy that you've got eachother to support - it seems like there is an amazing amount of love b etween you - too sweet! So often people go on a diet and the other party doesn't and this can lead to all kinds of problems, at least you have eachother.

Right, now, as for the main point of this thread.

Firstly - I have an enormous appetite. I could eat all day long if I let myself, but with any WOE you have to have a modicomb of self control (which I have to add, I hate that fact!! ) We got to this point by loving the food we ate....whether it be because we are just piggies...or in many cases our hormones make us want to gorge (which i would say in your case it probably is) and we find it difficult to go on any new WOE because we have loved food so much prior to going on it that it's psychologically difficult to not use it as a friend.
(I am using my own experience as an example - if this is not you then fair enough, I am just using it to explain a few points)

So we have this biological thing going on making us put on weight - and also making it hard to lose again....and this psychological thing going on which makes us really pissed off when we have to change the way we eat. It's like a very vicious circle.

But unfortunately, like a lot of other people, artificial sweetners do stall me out BIG TIME. There's the phisical thing that is like the chemical reactions in the body which no one can help - and then the psychological thing of eating sweet things so needing sweet things....does that make sense? You're far more likely to WANT the frankenfoods if you have them all the time.

I would suggest that you go into induction for just two more weeks.....what have you got to lose really?? In that time you will start to see your weight on the decline again, which will spur you on with the plan. I KNOW it's hard and I KNOW you will hate to have to do it - but by cutting out the sweetners you WILL un-addict yourself mentally and physically from the cravings that they produce.

Secondly...EAT enough. Make sure you visit that link that EmmaB posted the one with the calorie counter thing on it....hold on I'll find it....
http://www.countcarbs.com/tools/basal_active.htm
Make sure you enter your height/weight/age into it, and then just see how many cals you need to actually survive each day. That's without breathing, walking, exersising etc....you might just find that you're not eating ENOUGH! If you don't eat enough your body goes into starvation mode and you'll not lose the weight either.

I understand your wanting to lose weight to get pregnant....I did the same thing. I started the pregnancy at 250lbs - I ended up with twins - 50lb heavier than when i started....when i look back now i really wish I had got down lower before having children. i was almost uncapable of coping with my kids at 300lbs. It was SO devistatingly tireing anyway, and then lugging all that extra weight on top of everything was awful. I decided on losing weight when the scale tipped 300lbs - I was at 300lbs for the first 18 months of their lives and I regret every single minute of it.

I think you owe it to yourself and any children you might have to be at a better state weight wise.

I know all of this is probably falling on ears which do not really wish to listen....sometimes the truth is unbareable and you have to really truly need to get your head around it before you put your best foot forward.

You are wonderful people, and you just need to get a determination.....MG, if you want a baby then NOT doing this is NOT an option.

Good luck folks - you CAN do this!