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  #1   ^
Old Wed, Aug-30-17, 07:59
mef623 mef623 is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 29
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 216/177.5/156 Male 66
BF:
Progress: 64%
Default Hi! I'm Mike!

Hello, my name is Mike, and I'm a yo-yo dieter.

Crowd says: Hello Mike.

Sorry, this will be long. It's either this or work.

Hi all. I yo-yo. My weight over the past several years has moved in a range of 70 pounds (between 225 and 155) and I'd like to be a the lower end, rather than the higher end. I'm at 211 right now.

Currently, I'm following Atkins online, but I'm not sure that it's a sustainable lifestyle for me. Rather, my goal is to shift my eating so that 90%+ of what I eat is actual, real food. In other words, cut out the processed stuff. I know that that's not exactly low-carb, but I've looked at some options and can easily follow a "real foods" diet and keep my carbs in the 100g/day range, +/-25.

Plusses for me:

I know enough about nutrition to know what is good and bad for me. I'm not fooling myself that I can eat a bag of M&Ms every day.

I have a ton of choices, particularly for lunch. There are some great salad places near me and I can count the carbs that go into them. Lunch has traditionally been my unhealthiest meal.

Minuses for me:

I have a MAJOR sweet tooth. Salty doesn't really work for me.

I'm lazy. Exercising bores the you-know-what out of me. I'd much rather be watching Monk re-runs.

I LOVE fruit. The first few weeks of this has been killing me because I'm missing out. Yes, I've snuck a few blackberries and if my weight loss has stalled because I had five carbs of blackberries yesterday (out of 23 total), I may just stick my head in the toilet and flush.

I look at the scale too much. I know how bad that is and read the article "Why the scale lies" more than once. Doesn't matter. The more I think about not weighing myself, the more I feel a need to do so. Same thing with food: The more I try not to think about it, the more I do. Note: I'm diagnosed OCD (mild to moderate), so spending time in my own head is usually a dangerous place to be.

It took me about 10 minutes of back-to-school shopping at Target to decide that the witch in Hansel and Gretel was simply misunderstood. That has nothing to do with dieting, it's just an observation.

Biggest fear:

Every study that I've read says that once my body reaches a certain weight, it tries like crazy to keep me at that weight. The numbers are not pretty: Fewer than 10% of people that lose weight manage to keep it off. I've been in the 90% on more than one occasion. It's not pretty.

Thanks, all, for listening.

Mike
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  #2   ^
Old Wed, Aug-30-17, 14:32
JEY100's Avatar
JEY100 JEY100 is online now
Posts: 13,370
 
Plan: P:E/DDF
Stats: 225/150/169 Female 5' 9"
BF:45%/28%/25%
Progress: 134%
Location: NC
Default

Hi Mike

Reading your two posts, you have a delightful sense of humor...it will serve you well here on your journey to a healthy weight.

About that scale...

Quote:
Don’t Trust the Bathroom Scale With Your Mental Health

We humans are about 2/3 water. Each of us contains about 40 liters (or quarts) of the stuff, and each liter weighs a bit over 2 pounds. Our bodies effectively regulate fluid balance by adjusting urine output and sense of thirst, but this is done within a 2-liter range. Within this range, your body doesn’t really care if it is up to a liter above or below its ideal fluid level.

What this means is that we all live inside a 4-pound-wide grey zone, so that from day to day we fluctuate up or down (i.e., plus or minus) 2 pounds. This happens more or less at random, so with any one weight reading you don’t know where your body is within that fluid range. Your weight can be the same for 3 days in a row, and the next morning you wake up and the scale says you’ve ‘gained’ 3 pounds for no apparent reason.

For people who weigh themselves frequently, this can be maddening. There are two solutions to this problem. One, just don’t weigh yourself. Or two, defeat this variability by calculating average weights. You can weigh yourself every day, and then on one day per week, calculate your average for that week (i.e., the average or mean of 7 values). If you are really into math, you can weigh yourself every day and then each day calculate a new mean over the last 7 days. Each day you do this, you drop the oldest value and add the newest one to the calculation.

And of course, for [free] there’s an iPhone ‘App’ that will do this for you

Phinney, Stephen; Volek, Jeff (2011-07-08). The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable (pp. 241-242). Beyond Obesity LLC. Kindle Edition.


So if you have some OCD tendencies ( I do too) go for the app.. I use a free one with the silly name, Happy Scale. Weight every day, look at trends, variance from said trend, etc. Obsess all you want.

If truly OCD, would recommend you drop the "Sort Of" Atkins
Do, or Don't Do, there is no Try. It's good to have rules to follow.

Look at the three carb levels of this LCHF plan, https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb consider following the one you think you can do at this point, but 100g may not be a level for consistent weight loss if exercise is not your thing. Another option would be one of the Primal/Paleo/Whole 30 type plans...you get fruit, but no sugar, grains, dairy.

All the best,
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  #3   ^
Old Thu, Aug-31-17, 06:42
mef623 mef623 is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 29
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 216/177.5/156 Male 66
BF:
Progress: 64%
Default

Thank you! I appreciate the feedback.

I'm going to take a look at that link now! And yes, the "advantage" to OCD, if I can phrase it that way, is that it makes me really good at paying attention to and analyzing rules.

Mike

Quote:
Originally Posted by JEY100
Hi Mike

Reading your two posts, you have a delightful sense of humor...it will serve you well here on your journey to a healthy weight.

About that scale...



So if you have some OCD tendencies ( I do too) go for the app.. I use a free one with the silly name, Happy Scale. Weight every day, look at trends, variance from said trend, etc. Obsess all you want.

If truly OCD, would recommend you drop the "Sort Of" Atkins
Do, or Don't Do, there is no Try. It's good to have rules to follow.

Look at the three carb levels of this LCHF plan, https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb consider following the one you think you can do at this point, but 100g may not be a level for consistent weight loss if exercise is not your thing. Another option would be one of the Primal/Paleo/Whole 30 type plans...you get fruit, but no sugar, grains, dairy.

All the best,
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  #4   ^
Old Thu, Aug-31-17, 19:23
nawchem's Avatar
nawchem nawchem is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 8,701
 
Plan: No gluten, CAD
Stats: 196.0/158.5/149.0 Female 62
BF:36/29.0/27.3
Progress: 80%
Default

Welcome Mike

I've probably been off/on this forum a decade - count me in 90%. It would be embaressing but the people here are so encouraging.

Is the problem with fluctuating weight metabolism or diet consistancy?

Other than being a great round number, any reason for choosing 100g a day? Seems like you can get a lot of blueberries in your diet with that many carbs. (The blueberry crop failed the prices are expect to go way up ).

Wish you the best in your journey.
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  #5   ^
Old Fri, Sep-01-17, 07:12
mef623 mef623 is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 29
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 216/177.5/156 Male 66
BF:
Progress: 64%
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by nawchem
Welcome Mike

I've probably been off/on this forum a decade - count me in 90%. It would be embaressing but the people here are so encouraging.

Is the problem with fluctuating weight metabolism or diet consistancy?

Other than being a great round number, any reason for choosing 100g a day? Seems like you can get a lot of blueberries in your diet with that many carbs. (The blueberry crop failed the prices are expect to go way up ).

Wish you the best in your journey.


Thanks nawchem! The problem is definitely diet consistency. In other words, I know the difference between healthy and unhealthy, but my willpower (or lack thereof) sometimes gets the best of me. It's also a matter of how difficult it is to keep weight off once you've lost it. Even eating decently means that I end up putting weight back on.

As for the 100, I'm seeing studies describing a "sustain weight" level of carbs at 75-125, so I just hit the middle. Truthfully, I'll probably just end up adding back until I hit a level where I'm putting on weight again. In other words, if I start regressing at 80 carbs, I'll bring it back down.

The more I read about low-carb diets, the more nervous I get. Reading Gary Taubes makes it sound like I'm never going to be able to eat again!

Mike
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  #6   ^
Old Fri, Sep-01-17, 10:30
teaser's Avatar
teaser teaser is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 15,075
 
Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154 Male 67inches
BF:
Progress: 104%
Location: Ontario
Default

Sort of off-topic, but sort of on-topic;

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...-end-in-divorce

Quote:
Finally, there are many factors that influence a couple's chance of getting a divorce, so for any one couple to blindly accept that the 50/50 probability applies to them is a misleading over-simplification that could potentially become disruptive. Going into a life-long commitment with the idea that you only have a 50/50 chance of staying together can be damaging. If you only truly commit half of yourself, it isn't likely to work. If you believe in your heart that the chances of success are a coin-flip, you might walk away when things get tough instead of putting in the work necessary for a successful marriage. Most important is what we call the self-fulfilling prophesy. Simply put, if you believe that your chances of failing are high, then you are likely to see signs that you are "failing" more readily, and then use those signs as a confirmation that you are in fact failing. (This is also known as the confirmation bias.) In this case, you may actually be sabotaging your marriage.


I'm not saying you should be married to low carb, but faith and commitment do pay off.

I don't know what the kids are up to these days, but when I was a teenager, everybody had a guitar and was learning Stairway to Heaven. Most of them didn't get anywhere, over the long run, really. I don't know what the percentage is, but it doesn't matter. There's no reason to doubt that practice and commitment will in time lead to a better guitar player. It works if you do it--and if it doesn't work, but you're putting in a good effort, there are various tweaks to make it more likely to work.
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  #7   ^
Old Fri, Sep-01-17, 11:09
nawchem's Avatar
nawchem nawchem is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 8,701
 
Plan: No gluten, CAD
Stats: 196.0/158.5/149.0 Female 62
BF:36/29.0/27.3
Progress: 80%
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by mef623
Thanks nawchem! The problem is definitely diet consistency. In other words, I know the difference between healthy and unhealthy, but my willpower (or lack thereof) sometimes gets the best of me. It's also a matter of how difficult it is to keep weight off once you've lost it. Even eating decently means that I end up putting weight back on.

As for the 100, I'm seeing studies describing a "sustain weight" level of carbs at 75-125, so I just hit the middle. Truthfully, I'll probably just end up adding back until I hit a level where I'm putting on weight again. In other words, if I start regressing at 80 carbs, I'll bring it back down.

The more I read about low-carb diets, the more nervous I get. Reading Gary Taubes makes it sound like I'm never going to be able to eat again!

Mike


If by eating again you mean going back to the diet that you got you here, probably won't be able to do that without regain.

I lost 55lbs and kept it off 5 years quite happily until a car wreck of injuries and a simultaneous thyroid problem hit. Exercising makes me want to do other healthy things, its a great stress reducer.

The thing with lowcarb is that after a while plastic junk food loses a lot of appeal. You start realizing what hunger is when you're no longer driven to eat by unstable blood sugar. Its like quitting smoking, you have to make it past the addiction and its painful a while. Then the trick is to find LC foods that you love.
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  #8   ^
Old Fri, Sep-01-17, 11:18
mef623 mef623 is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 29
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 216/177.5/156 Male 66
BF:
Progress: 64%
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by teaser
Sort of off-topic, but sort of on-topic;

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...-end-in-divorce



I'm not saying you should be married to low carb, but faith and commitment do pay off.

I don't know what the kids are up to these days, but when I was a teenager, everybody had a guitar and was learning Stairway to Heaven. Most of them didn't get anywhere, over the long run, really. I don't know what the percentage is, but it doesn't matter. There's no reason to doubt that practice and commitment will in time lead to a better guitar player. It works if you do it--and if it doesn't work, but you're putting in a good effort, there are various tweaks to make it more likely to work.


Thanks! I appreciate the feedback!

Quote:
Originally Posted by nawchem
If by eating again you mean going back to the diet that you got you here, probably won't be able to do that without regain.

I lost 55lbs and kept it off 5 years quite happily until a car wreck of injuries and a simultaneous thyroid problem hit. Exercising makes me want to do other healthy things, its a great stress reducer.

The thing with lowcarb is that after a while plastic junk food loses a lot of appeal. You start realizing what hunger is when you're no longer driven to eat by unstable blood sugar. Its like quitting smoking, you have to make it past the addiction and its painful a while. Then the trick is to find LC foods that you love.


Right now, the only thing that I really miss is fruit. In Atkins, that comes back in later, but I have a feeling that that would be enough to satisfy the sweet tooth. An apple has 30 grams of net carbs, so that may someday be 1/2 of my daily allowance, but at least it's something. And we'll always have berries.

Mike
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  #9   ^
Old Sat, Sep-02-17, 03:52
JEY100's Avatar
JEY100 JEY100 is online now
Posts: 13,370
 
Plan: P:E/DDF
Stats: 225/150/169 Female 5' 9"
BF:45%/28%/25%
Progress: 134%
Location: NC
Default

There are a few ways to have fruit flavors on a LC diet without the carbs. The SF jello cups, a box of SF jello mixed with cream cheese or whipped cream, fruit flavored extracts (Walmart has the Watkins brand) banana was one I missed so used that in creamy desserts. Protein powders if you use those. Frozen berries whipped with heavy cream makes a wonderful type of custard ice cream. The SF products might keep your sweet tooth alive, so need to test if they work for you, but those are a few ways to have fruit flavors without the carbs.

Check cheesecakes and the "quick and easy creamy sweets" in the Desserts forum for hyperlinked "recipes". ***http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=217797

*** these recipes are along the line of add a fruit extract to softened cream cheese, easy.

Last edited by JEY100 : Sat, Sep-02-17 at 04:07.
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  #10   ^
Old Sat, Sep-02-17, 05:15
thud123's Avatar
thud123 thud123 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 7,422
 
Plan: P:E=>1 (Q3-22)
Stats: 168/100/82 Male 182cm
BF:
Progress: 79%
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by mef623
...

Right now, the only thing that I really miss is fruit. In Atkins, that comes back in later, but I have a feeling that that would be enough to satisfy the sweet tooth...

Your sense of taste and scale will likely change over time. A piece of fruit here and there is probably fine at some point, even the occasional gorge on apples and getting the "green apple squits" I guess

I have a damaged liver so I'm avoiding fruit vigorusly and bite my lip when I can when people ask why I don't want some and say it's "healthy" - Fruit didn't do the damage for me but my liver needs a break - what's left of it is too busy making fatty acids that I can use.

Dr. Jason Fung on Fructose - Good read!

https://idmprogram.com/deadly-effec...l-obesity-xxxi/

you are doing well to question all these things Mike!
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  #11   ^
Old Sun, Sep-03-17, 08:59
mef623 mef623 is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 29
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 216/177.5/156 Male 66
BF:
Progress: 64%
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by JEY100
There are a few ways to have fruit flavors on a LC diet without the carbs. The SF jello cups, a box of SF jello mixed with cream cheese or whipped cream, fruit flavored extracts (Walmart has the Watkins brand) banana was one I missed so used that in creamy desserts. Protein powders if you use those. Frozen berries whipped with heavy cream makes a wonderful type of custard ice cream. The SF products might keep your sweet tooth alive, so need to test if they work for you, but those are a few ways to have fruit flavors without the carbs.

Check cheesecakes and the "quick and easy creamy sweets" in the Desserts forum for hyperlinked "recipes". ***http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=217797

*** these recipes are along the line of add a fruit extract to softened cream cheese, easy.


Yum, thanks! I'm looking forward to stage two where I can bring back a little fruit. Fortunately, berries are my favorite and are the most "carb-friendly." Out come the measuring cups!

Quote:
Originally Posted by thud123
Your sense of taste and scale will likely change over time. A piece of fruit here and there is probably fine at some point, even the occasional gorge on apples and getting the "green apple squits" I guess

I have a damaged liver so I'm avoiding fruit vigorusly and bite my lip when I can when people ask why I don't want some and say it's "healthy" - Fruit didn't do the damage for me but my liver needs a break - what's left of it is too busy making fatty acids that I can use.

Dr. Jason Fung on Fructose - Good read!

https://idmprogram.com/deadly-effec...l-obesity-xxxi/

you are doing well to question all these things Mike!


Thanks Thud! It's only been 2-3 weeks but I'm definitely not craving carbs the way that I did in the beginning. I'm hoping that that continues.

I understand what you say about people weighing in (no pun intended. well, maybe intended a little) on your eating. I've gotten some weird looks. Oh well, goes with the territory.

Mike
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