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