Hi everyone, i ve been doing low carb for one and a half months, my starting thread is in emotional and body issues forum and my backstory is there.

I started with about 176. The truth is that is an estimate, i havent weigh in a long time, and im afraid to do so cause the number will probably KILL my self esteem, and im afraid it will make me give everything up .

My backstory: i ve been thin all my life, i ve been a very thin teenager (around 110 at 5´10), also was thin in my twenties (between 130 and 140), since im big build (have a wide back) i looked really very thin at 140.

Point is, most of my young life i ve been from thin to very thin, and when i was around 26 (im 33), i started slowly (very slowly) gaining weight, till i get to be actually fat, without even noticing. But the truth is that i was never actually fat until this year, i was kinda mantaining between 150-165, for the last couple of years. It was THIS YEAR, that my weigh peaked and i gained something like 20 pounds in like A MONTH.

The last time i weigh was in 2013, and i weigh around 160 back then, in 2014 i kinda was in that same weight, but i started going out with my boyfriend, everything went steady, this year we move in together and BAM, i gained weight very rapidly and was gaining more and more. So, for the FIRST TIME EVER i decided i will diet. I searched and searched and decided low carb was the best diet (plus, i knew this site from before, i ve been registered for years but never actually did the diet).


Now, one month and a half after starting the diet, i lost maybe 5 pounds (this is from pictures i ve been taking weekly, from people tell me they can notice, and from clothes that fit better than before), nothing else. Meanwhile, i deprived myself from all foods i love, specially chocolate .

I LOVE meat, thats true, but i eat meat every day (with some vegetables, but meat meat meat), and im kind of tired of it. I also would love to eat some sweets (i dont eat any since starting the diet), or some pizza once in a while, or not be afraid of rice. Anyways, the point is, i still feel really fat , still cant find a jean that fits me in stores (been using a black jogging for works for weeks, because i dont find clothes than fit), and when i take a picture i see my giant face and giant body and i cant believe im that person.


Yes, i did lost some weight, but it is so little, im still so far away of being like i used to be or even normal, i still CANT fit in the jeans i wore last year! and the sacrifice is so much, that i dont even know if its worth it anymore!!!


How do you guys do to feel like all this is worth it? even if you are losing something like 0.5 pounds a week??

help and advice is very appreciated and needed!!!

thank you

For me when I first started, the best bit was that I could eat as much as I liked - I couldnt have high carb stuff, but I could physically put food in my mouth. It became apparent to me that sugar was an addiction, so just like any other addiction, I could either stay a slave to it and get fatter and fatter, or stop. So I stopped. Its this addiction that prevented me being able to go on a low calorie/low fat diet - whereby I could eat a small amount - duh, I wanted the whole damn bar lol!!!!

I also found that I felt so much healthier by not eating wheat, sugar, carbs.... That in itself was a good enough reason

So thats how I stuck with it. You do have to stick with something, cos if you keep eating as you have to make you increase in weight, then you'll keep getting bigger

Jo xxx

Lulee, are you sure you only lost 5 lbs.? Did you weigh yourself before you started? Have you weighed yourself everyday since then? If you have been strict, you may have lost more than 5 lbs, especially if others are noticing it also. If you want pizza, make some cauliflower crust pizza! It's quite good, especially drizzled with extra olive oil.

And not to be nosy, but if it's near that time of the month, I always feel super frustrated and craving chocolate and sweets. Maybe some sugar free Jello with HWC can tide you over? Best of luck!

Try the Atkins frozen pizza-not 100% great but would settle your pizza craving and keep you on track. Ditto Atkins candy-i like the M&Ms.

There's an amazing pizza quiche recipe in the cooking forum.


I do it because it is how I eat to stay healthy. If your focus is just weight loss then I wonder what happens when you reach your goal weight? Will you say "finally, now I can eat pizza!" and end up back here again?

Yes! I would say if you must go off low carb, still don't eat pizza. It's terrible for you regardless of your weight.

What are your real goals, Lulee? If you don't know what you weighed to start, and you don't know what you weigh now, you haven't really given yourself a chance to succeed, have you?

But if all you want to do is lose weight, well, you are doing it: people are noticing. If you want to avoid gaining more, and be healthier, you won't do it by eating healthy and then going back to eating the way you used to, will you? In fact, you'll gain the weight back, and, if you are like most of us, you'll gain more, as well.

You are 5'10". If you were that tall and weighed 110, you weren't very thin. You were severely underweight. Your BMI was only 15.8.

According to the CDC, a healthy weight range for someone 5'10" is between 129 and 174. Now that's a wide range, true.

But think of the range of beautiful women out there; rail-thin people are not that common, and women of all sizes are beautiful. The issue with being overweight isn't so much the size as the health issues that become more common as you gain.

If I were you (and I'm not) I'd do two things. First, I'd invest in a scale. I would face whatever it is I weigh right now, and measure, as well. Second, I would write down what I want from life, why I want it, and when I want it. And I would ask myself, "How does the way I feel about my body affect all that?"

Weight change brings all sorts of painful stuff bubbling to the surface. Be kind to yourself. And remember that feeding yourself poison--and that's what high carb food is--is not kind.

You may have already had the pizza by the time you read this but it's not too late to stay in the successful mindset. You say you lost 5# in a little over a month. So if you stuck on the wagon, you'd lose 60# in a year. Get creative.Find ways to eat your favorite food low carb style. Otherwise, you must decide to love your big body the way it is. Success is that way ---> low carb. Complacency and is right where you are.

(Try looking up low carb versions of your favorite foods on Pinterest. Great ideas that will make you crave low carb!)

The question is, when you take a good look at yourself in the mirror do you like how your body looks? If it looks overweight, then you've been eating the wrong things for your body and probably too much of it as well, and that's how you got where you are. If you do nothing, you'll at the very least stay where you are, and more likely, you'll put on more and more weight over time.

Speaking for myself, I'm not sure what my ideal weight is going to be, I only know it's less than I am now. I have a general goal, but I'm always ready to say either it's not enough when I get there, or perhaps I'll look the way I want before that point. The important thing is this: You can spend DECADES not doing anything about excess weight….and many of us on these forums have done exactly that. So my advice is don't do that. Take control of things NOW, change your eating….what you eat and how much you eat. It's only FOOD….don't let it control you. You need to control your food. But if what you stuff into your mouth is more important than your health and how your body looks, then your choice will be to keep dawdling around with this, year after year, decade after decade. You DO have to make a choice, you really can't have both. This took me a long time to learn and accept, and now I wish I hadn't taken so darn long figuring it out.

Losing weight is actually rather simple, but at the same time, it's not exactly easy. What you need to do can be stated simply, but the hard part is in your head. It takes focus, determination, , work, and consistency. No cheating because that puts you in a yo-yo weight loss program. Also you must have patience, because weight loss is NOT and CANNOT be fast, and don't ever get duped into believing it is. Slow and steady wins the game. The fact is, most people don't work on the emotional aspect of weight loss, and they give up too quickly because it's all too hard.

It's good to not put your mind in a place of feeling deprived. It helps me to think "I can eat any darn thing I want, but I CHOOSE to not eat all the sugar/carb things that I know make me gain weight. I CHOOSE this because eating on the Atkins plan makes it the easiest it can possibly be to lose weight. As long as I eat this way, I have very low hunger, I eat less, my cravings go away after a couple of weeks, and this state makes me able to stick with this way of eating. And I'm going to choose this way of eating for now without attaching emotion to it. It's how I eat."

Again speaking for myself, losing weight successfully depends on your mindset. Put yourself in the right mindset and it all becomes much much easier to do.

Just scrape the topping off the Pizza, Thats the good part anyway.
Feed the crusts to the dog... no actually don't, even the dog deserves real food

Thanks everyone for your answers! I will answer to your questions quoting individually, thanks!

Thanks jo!

Yes, im like that too. Ive NEVER been able to have just one cookie, or just one spoon of ice cream, or just one bite of cake .

My boyfriend, who lives with me and THANKFULLY decided to do this diet with me (because he is a dear and wonderful and even does all the low carb cooking ), isnt like that at all: he has the biggest willpower. He can easily have a box of fancy chocolates and make it last a month! And i cant, lol, thats why i think i got fat: i started living with him in february and thats when i started gaining : he had sweets all the time in his house (when i lived alone, i have none, cause i know how i am) and i couldnt control myself. So i eat and eat and i gained like 20 pounds in two months, much much much more and fast than ever. Before that, i gained those 20 pounds slowly over....6 years!

Anyways, we decided to just drop ALL the sweets and carb from the house and eat all natural-homemade food. You are right, i do feel healthier. Its just sometimes it gets hard.

Thanks Anne! No, i havent weigh myself, cause im TERRIFIED of doing so. If i see the feared number (80! kilos, wich is 176 pounds) im afraid it would depress me, so i assume i weigh that much (i was never in my life near that weigh and never thought i would), cause thats enough to scare me and send me to do something about it asap.

Yes, i do get bloated near that time of the month, and it is actually that time, so maybe thats why i feel so bad.

I have been eating some sugar free-zero carb jello, but i kept forgetting to have it cause im not a fan of it, but its true it keeps me off desiring chocolates and other sweets, so i have to force myself to it a bit in the afternoon, in order to avoid cravings.

Yes, you guys are right, im dangerously approaching a not so good mindset with this thoughts im having later.

Its sad cause i was SO focused, i have been reading so much about this for years and know just how bad carbs are, how awful pizza is, and that low carb is a lifelong plan, so pizza would be a very very rare thing in my future, if its gonna be there at all.

but sometimes its gets hard and i forget about it for a while

thanks mickisue, for the advice

5 10 is what some online sites told me my height in cms is, but others told me 5 9 or even 5 8, after i rechcked, so i cant be sure. IM 176 cm, wich is very tall for a girl, i was always the tallest in my class, etc, im very tall but dont know exactly if 5 9, or 5 10.

I was never underweight i think, i did weigh 50 kilos in my early teens (wich is 110 i think, where i live we dont use pounds/inches, we use kilos/centimetros) and was very very thin, but in my youth years i was just thin at 130/140.
When i weigh 110, i was told i was "too skinny" by schoolmates and even in my family (who always have been really cruel -they are now with how fat i am ) they had a nickname for me that came from a local tv show of that time (the 90s) of a very stick think grotesque woman and they told me jockingly i must have a big worm in my stomach cause i ate so much and was so thin .

Anyways, in my late teens and 20s that joke stopped cause i wasnt super thin anymore, i was just normal at 130-140. But, when i hitted 150, the "you are getting fat" comments starting to flow. And when i got to be almost 180 my dad COULDNT STOP telling me how horribly fat i was everytime i saw him


But yes, i ve been told by people, my boyfriend at first, who, since he is the kindest nicest person ever, i thought he was just telling me because he knew i was struggling, and he is sweet like that, so to make sure i was actually losing, i sent pictures to my parents (who i havent seen in months) of one before and one after pictures and THEY (who really can be the cruelest people on earth and will tell me how fat i look at every opportunity) told me the changes were noticeable, so maybe i DID lose more than 5 pounds, i dont know, but i truly dont feel like it cause i still look horribly and cant finde a single size of clothes that fit in this entire city