Hi to everyone who has dropped in on this thread and passed on their congratulations!!!

Your kind words and encouragement mean a lot to me.

However, I feel like I owe you a kind of explanation, (or even apology???)

I wonder whether some of you might think I have "cheated" or "moved the goalposts", so I'd like to explain myself a little.

This time last year I decided that my goal weight was 61kg/135lbs, which I almost reached for about a minute. Then there was the football here in Europe, and I watched a lot of football on TV and drank beer... So I went back up to about 138lbs by mid-summer. I maintained my weight till Christmas, then kind of lost it, what with one thing and another, and by January 12th 2009, I was back up to 146lbs.

At some point in the spring, I changed my goal weight from 135lbs to 130lbs, as I had decided that I really would like to see the number 59 (my old goal weight in kilos) as I felt the psychological effect of seeing a number 5 at the beginning of my kilo weight would be tremendous!!!

However, I have just had a change in thinking due to having read a new book, "The Schwarzbein Principle II: The Transition" by Dr Diana Schwarzbein.

Reading this book, which goes into some detail about the hormones insulin, adrenaline and cortisol, I saw myself described. Since my late teens/early 20s, I have been what you could call an "adrenaline junkie". Rushing around, doing loads of stuff, getting a kick out of being on top of 20 jobs at once, never sitting down for longer than 5 minutes: that's me. However, I am now 45 and this way of life is no longer doing me any good.

I used to smoke, drink coffee like there was no tomorrow and drink beer pretty much every night.

When I became a mother, just over 12 years ago, I knew I wanted to change my habits and look after myself better. I have made good progress since then, but things could still be better.

In December 2001, I gave up cigarettes for good and have never looked back for a minute. By Easter 2003 I had unfortunately - giving up smoking does this to you sometimes - put on a lot of weight... My highest weight was 165lbs, which was a lot on my 5'5" frame. I managed to lose weight (on a very low-fat diet, but that is another story) and since 2004 maintained my weight more or less at about about 140lbs, going up and down a bit, but not that much.

My low-carb story started in May 2007 and I am now totally committed to this WOE as it suits my metabolism and tastes fine, but I have had a tendency to put the weight back on again, lose it again, and so on. The main reason is that I let myself get stressed out, which sometimes leads me into drinking beer, and then the weight goes back on.

Having read SPII, I now feel that the time has come for me to address the following issues:

The way I deal with stress, to stop being an adrenaline junkie, to stop dealing with stress by having alcohol, to stop relying on coffee and being busy to get this unhealthy adrenaline kick.

I have got my weight to 136.4lbs, which is perfectly acceptable! That translates into a BMI (for what it's worth) of 22.9 and I do look reasonably slim. I have decided that this weight is fine, and that, although I do not want it to go up again, my main priority is no longer getting to that "magic" 130lb mark, but to improve how I deal with stress and to wean myself off caffeine and to carry on with reducing my beer consumption.

Since January 12th 2009, I have drunk a heck of a lot less beer than I used to - just on about 40 occasions out of about 150 days (I don't have my diary here right now with the exact statistics), rather than every night which used to be the case. I am really pleased about this, but, as I say, I still feel the need to slow down and stop relying on coffee during the day.

Hence my decision to change my stats and abandon my "last five pounds" project...

I really hope that nobody feels I have "let the side down" in making this decision, but I really feel that it is the right thing for me to do. I have been able to maintain my weight for the last five years (only going up ten pounds every now and then, but then losing again) and I feel that this is not the issue any more, as I can do the maintenance thing: it's the reliance on caffeine during the day, the temptation to drink beer when I'm stressed, my tendency to rush around that I now want to deal with.

The Schwarzbein food plan is also low-carb, although not as low as Atkins induction. It allows me to eat pretty much the way I already was eating for the last two years, just with a few more carbs. So I am not "abandoning" the LC WOE or anything, I firmly believe that of the many WOE in our modern world, this has to be the healthiest, I am just shifting priorities away from focussing only on numbers, and am now going to try and improve other areas of my life.

I am reasonably confident that I will succeed as I have already made considerable improvements on various fronts!

Please wish me luck and feel free to pop into my journal!

amanda

Hi Amanada,
There is no such thing as cheating surely - diets, WOEs, WOLs, call them what you will, are all about reaching a goal that you are comfortable with and that makes you happy. If you've done that then congratulations are in order!!!

While we're on the 'last few pounds' subject though, how the hell DO you get them to shift? i have been stuck here for months - it's like my body's found the weight it wants to be and I can't do anything about it! But I had never been this weight before I broke my ankle - it's not fair!

Rant over, what can I actually do about it? I'm on practically induction levels with a salad thrown in every day. Should I start counting calories, cutting out everything except the pure food? Cutting fat a bit (for calorie counts sake, as I'm sure I use FAR too much mayo). Help! I can't wear most of my clothes still!

Hi Kimberleyb,

Thanks for your kind words!

And now to your questions:



I just sneaked a look at your public profile and it says you are 1m 68cm, aged 29. So you are 3cms taller than me. Is your goal weight the weight you used to be or is this just the weight you want to be? 110lbs is 50kg. This would be extremely skinny and would give you a BMI of 17.8 (I just calculated it), which is waaaaaaaaay too low!!! "They" say that a normal BMI is between 20-25.

At the age of 29, I weighed about 130lbs. I have a fairly slight frame, although my shoulders are relatively broad. Where do you get the number 110 from? I weighed about 8 stone 3lbs (115lbs) in my early 20s, but I was skinny as hell!!! All bones and pointy shoulder bones - not really that attractive, actually, when I see pictures. Now, at 45, I have got myself to 136lbs (thereabouts ) and I think I look fairly OK, although there is too much jiggle in the upper thighs and the butt looks fat in department store mirrors!!!

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is whether you are aiming for too low a weight anyway? You are now at 60kg, which seems about right for your height and age. Were you very skinny before your accident? You say that your clothes don't fit, so I'm wondering what your pre-accident weight was. Whatever the case may be, please don't try to go down to 110lbs. This is not a healthy weight for a woman of childbearing years to be.



So you're just having about 20 or so grammes of carbs??? I could never manage to get that low. I lost my 5kg this year doing LC the Barry Groves way (get his book "Natural Health and Weight Loss", it's a great introduction to a gentler way of LCing than the Atkins way and will give you a whole load of info about the myth of "calories in equals calories out" and other great stuff!). He recommends 40-60g of carbs a day, but I never even got that low. I lost on 70g of carbs a day, but took care to eat lots of fat, especially the saturated sort. I NEVER counted calories and I never will!!!

I wonder if you have got yourself into starvation mode, and this is NOT a good place to be. I am currently re-reading this Schwarzbein book and doing the starvation thing puts the body under a huge amount of stress, especially your hormones, and you end up "eating yourself up". PLEASE DON'T DO THIS TO YOURSELF!!!



NOOOOOO!!! (see above)



NOOOOO!!! You have to get energy from somewhere!!! According to BG, you need the proteins in your food for your metabolic functions (replacing used up body parts, so to speak) not for energy. You only need a minimum of carbs to keep you from getting too low blood sugar. Your energy comes from the fat in your diet. If your body is then in fat-burning mode because the main energy component in your diet is fat, then it is no hassle for your body to switch to burning its own fat when the dietary fat runs out. So goes the theory.



I really feel for you, but for this low-carb thing to work, you may need to read a little more. I am - as you may have noticed - a Barry Groves fan (try his Second Opinions website if you don't want to buy the book, but I really would in your shoes). I am also fairly enamoured by this Schwarzbein lady as she actually goes into detail about hormones and the psychological elements of our eating habits and lifestyle, which is not covered in any of the other LC books I have read.

It seems to me that you are convinced that the only way to lose weight is by eating less and eating fewer calories. It isn't. I did it the low-fat way, and, believe me, I lost muscle strength, big time, even though I did get slimmer. I can now wear the same clothes at 61-62kg that I wore after this low-fat crap diet at 59kg - I must have had 2 kilos less muscle back then!!! Or maybe my bones are also denser, too, because your bones need protein and I certainly wasn't getting much of that!

You can lose weight by eating till you're full, by eating bacon and eggs for breakfast, meat and veggies for lunch and fullfat cheese with veggies for supper. I had about 2 slices of bread a day, plus coffee with dark chocolate. I don't feel hungry on this WOE; I don't feel deprived in any way. But I still lost weight!!! It is amazing, but true. Deprivation is not what you need and it is certainly not what your body needs.

I looked at the link but there was no information on what you are actually eating. Could you post me a few sample days of what you have actually been eating? I could also give you a few sample menus of what I actually ate when I was losing, if you're interested.

You can post it in my journal if you don't want to correspond here. Or open your own journal. It's a great way to be accountable to yourself and others.

Sorry for the rant, but I just have this feeling that you are probably depriving yourself of food and this is not the way to go. You can really damage your metabolism by doing that. I don't want to lecture; I'm just concerned about your health.

Oh, and one last thing: alcohol, especially beer or lager, do not go well with LCing. This is something I have learnt over the past two years in my LC experiment: if I want to lose, I have to stay off the beer! If I want to gain again, all I need to do is drink beer about three times a week and the weight will go straight back on again. Do you drink alcohol regularly? That could be playing a part in your inability to lose weight, if you are.

All the best,

amanda

Hi Amanada,

Thanks for your eply. Gosh please don't worry - my goal weight was the weight I was two years ago before my accident. I was between a UK size 8-10, so slim but not skinny (no bones visible or anything).

I don't trust the BMI thing, because it doesn't take into account the fact that I..ahem...have no boobs to speak off. I am supposed to have the frame of a long-distance runner.

Athough my BMI at this weight is supposedly healthy, I am walking around with my belly sticking out the same amount as my boobs! That can't be healthy and I will not do that the rest of my life! By the way, not in the slightest bit interested in childbearing

I'm not in starvation mode - I eat A LOT!

Typical day:
Brek: 1-carb sausages or 2 boiled eggs
Lunch: Lots of chicken mayo with handful salad
Dinner: 2 steaks or cheese and ham omelette etc
Snacks: pepperami, salami
Drnks: Diet soft drinks, coffe, herbal tea, water, NO alhohol
No real cheats to speak of (the occasional carrot or strawberries)

I have read DANDR and Protein Power, but maybe I should re-read as it was about a year ago.

What I meant was eating 'pure food' is that sometimes I have used pre-packaged chicken mayo, egg mayo and stuff, which must have preservatives etc in them. Their carb counts are very low, but maybe the artificial stuff is throwing me off- does that happen? Same re sugar-free drinks?

I am not depriving mself of food although stuff in the distant past has probably screwed my metabolism.

Does this help any?

Hi Kimberleyb,

I'll do my best to reply to your post:



So you used to weigh 50kg? Once, after a relationship break-up, I went down to 47kg. That was way too thin. But, if you say, that you don't get boney at that weight, then it could well be an OK weight for you. But I bet you don't have much extra padding anywhere at that weight, do you?



One thing that will give you a bit more upstairs is eating more fat. Boobs are mostly fat, which is why all those female athletes look flat-chested. They have no body fat, hence no boobs.



Accumulating weight around the midsection is something which Dr Schwarzbein mentions in her book. It is something to do with insulin, but I haven't got my head round all the science yet. You could always try and get this book out of your local library if you don't want to invest the money. I am sure if they don't have it in stock, they can order it from elsewhere.


GOOD!!!



So, basically, you're not eating ANY carbs???



Neither of these books go into the effect of a VLC diet on your hormones. I shall go and grab my SPII right now and see what she says about VLC diets. I think this is not the way for you to go, and that this way of eating is probably doing you some harm.



If you are a single lady living on your own with a full-time job, this is understandable. But, yes, there will be more chemical additives in stuff like this. I don't make my own mayo, (I keep meaning to, but the way to hell is paved with good intentions and all that...). They could be having some kind of negative effect.



The problem with sugar-free drinks, apparently, is that they completely confuse your body. Rats fed drinks like this ended up eating more food, if I remember one study correctly. They got the diet coke or whatever lab rats get, thought they were getting some actual food, but weren't, and then ate more than the lab rats who got sugared drinks. Artificial sweeteners are dangerous, IMHO. I have never liked the taste of them so I never went near them. I put half a teaspoon of raw cane sugar in my coffee, which is only 3g of carbs, which is not going to kill me.



It may well be possible...


YUP!!!

amanda

Just skimmed through SPII and found a few comments by Dr S about high-protein, low-carb diets. From your description, the above food intake is very high in protein, not that high in fat, and almost zero carbs. Just for the heck of it, have you ever inputted your food intake into a programme like Fitday to see what the percentages come out as? How much fat etc?

This is not a balanced diet, and without some carbs, you are going to be missing out on quite a few vitamins and minerals, such as magnesium. Processed foods have had most of the goodness processed out of them.

Anyway, Dr S says that high protein diets raise your adrenaline levels, because your body is having to convert proteins into sugar. Caffeine has the same effect. And birth-control pills do the same. Do you take the pill?

How were you eating before you started this high-protein diet? Did you eat a high-carb, low-fat diet? Excess sugar gets converted to fat, which usually goes to your tum area.

However, if you are eating more protein than you need, which is then also getting converted to excess sugar, then you could be getting the same effect from your current diet: fat accumulation around the middle. That would be my theory from my current knowledge.

I would reduce the protein proportions, up the carbs and fats a bit and see what happens. You cannot be getting all the nutrients you need from your current diet. Or just re-read Protein Power. Or get hold of/buy "The Schwarzbein Principle II: The Transition" and read up about the effects of what we eat on our hormones.

Whatever you do, it would seem that what you have been doing is not working, so it is time to make some changes. You wrote that you've "been stuck here for months", so something is not right. If your weight is more or less OK, but your body composition is off, then you need to change something.

Over the last two years, reading comments from women on this forum, it would seem that a lot of women do badly on very-low-carb diets (VLC diets). Seeing as our bodies are naturally composed of more fat than men's, it makes sense that we need to eat more fat than men do, given that they have more muscle proportionate to fat. I would really urge you to try some other way of eating, but not to lower your carbs even more.

Anyway, I hope you don't feel offended. I went on this very-low-fat diet a few years ago, fully believing that it was a good thing to do. Thanks to this forum, I learn something new every day!!! I have just discovered that I probably had a zinc deficiency - thanks to someone who regularly corresponds with me and I am sooooooo grateful for having found this out as some strange symptoms I was having are now gone and others are resolving.

I hope that this input from me will lead you to finding out a few new things which will improve your body composition and get you back into your old clothes!!!

Whatever you do, good luck!

amanda

Amanda, I wish you the best and finding that happy balance is sometimes just as hard as finding the happy weight. I will be praying for ya!

Hi Amanda,
Thanks again for your responses- I really do appreciate it.

I did use to weigh 50kg - I once went lower than that, but that was at a difficult time in my life and I was super skinny in a bad way. 50kg is my goal so I can fit into my clothes again and have a few pounds to play with for treats. I don't want to be any lower than that - a few pounds over would be ok.

No I'm not eating very many carbs - about a salads worth a day, plus the small amount of carbs from eggs, coffee etc.

Maybe I should up the carbs a bit, but I'm so frustrated that I'm not losing any more weight, that I'm kinda loathe to do that!

I had strawberries and cream yesterday and I look a bit leaner, so maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing.

I am junking the ready made chicken mayo. I don't think having ready-made mayo will kill me, but it's proabably not good to have all the preprepared chisken mayo etc as I think it has nitrates and preservatives.

I may also have to ditch the diet drinks, but in this heat I just want a cool, fizzy drink and I can't drink that much water. Is there anything I could add to water to make it more palatable?

I haven't used Fitday to look at my ratios, but I do take a multivitamin and potassium tabletevery morning and 2 magnesium tablets every night.

Gosh does very high protein really raise your adrenaline levels? What are the negative effects of that on the body? I don't take the pill, as I have an implant, but I am a bit of a caffeine fiend as well...

Before this diet I was demi-vegetarian, so chicken and fish etc. Not very carb heavy even then. I did eat bread as a snack, but was never heavily into pasta or potatoes. Mostly veg and fish. I did notice that these carby items would make me fatter the next day, so avoided them mostly. Yes I was low fat.

Interesting about excess protein getting converted to sugar i wasn't aware of this.

I will definiely get hold of "The Schwarzbein Principle II" and see if I can make the scale start moving again in a healthy way.

Thanks again Amanda

Hi KimberleyB,

You wrote this:


You're welcome!


Yeah, I know what you mean - I went down to 47kg during a relationship breakdown. Lived on coffee and cigarettes and had zero appetite.



I understand your reluctance, but it may well be the lack of carbs that is the problem. I have read that a small amount of carbs is necessary for processing fat/protein.



And even that can only have been what, 20g of carbs max? 100g of strawbs is 8g of carbs. 200g of strawbs is a big bowl. The cream only has negligible carbs (in my book).



Have a look at the label the next time you see it! Some ready-made stuff is not always that bad.



Diet drinks... Hmm... NOT good. I just read about aspartame and it wasn't nice: none of these artificial sweeteners are good, but I couldn't quote you the hows and why's right now.

How about having fizzy water with a squeeze of lemon/lime as an alternative? Or iced tea with lemon juice and a bit of sugar if necessary? Or iced coffee?



That sounds OK.



Hey, I don't want to scare you here, but, if this Dr S is right, then the problem with a meal which is mostly protein is that it can eventually result in low blood sugar (it's the most difficult way for the body to make new sugar, to convert protein to glucose, as far as I remember). This is a red-alert situation for the body and adrenaline is the signal to the liver to make sugar. Adrenaline is the flight-or-fight hormone, gets your heart racing, pulse rate up etc. Caffeine has the same effect on the body: it raises your adrenaline levels. Permanently elevated adrenaline levels equals major stress for the body - especially when there wasn't a "real" danger anywhere (no saber-toothed tigers or hairy mammoths threatening to devour your children scenario).



You could really see that these carby foods made you fatter the very next day? Normally, the carbs would initially maybe cause a bit of water bloat - they attract water - but you wouldn't have put on fat weight the very next day. With me, if I eat too many carbs, plus add beer into the mix, I don't notice extra fat for a couple of days. I think you may have confused water retention with putting on fat.

So, your "old diet" was protein-heavy, too, really? But low-fat as well...



It's called "gluconeogenesis" and it is how the liver can convert protein and fatty acids into glucose. If we couldn't do this, all those populations like the Inuit (lived on seal blubber mostly) and the Masai (live on blood and milk) couldn't survive. The brain needs glucose as fuel, but, Nature being clever, we can make it ourselves!!! Some argue that this is then enough reason to not eat any carbs whatsoever; others say that it is a stress for the body.



It will certainly give you food for thought! It's given me a new perspective and I'm happily trying out her recommendations on how to taper off caffeine. I have been an adrenaline junkie for the last 20 years and it is maybe time to give me body a rest!!!


Once again, you're very welcome!

Let me know what you think of the Schwarzbein book when you've read it.

amanda