Good morning, everyone! I'm Mel. A week or two ago, I found the first Carb Nite thread here, which started around February. It's 65 pages long, you guys!!! =) I've been reading from the start, and am on page 38 or so. That takes me to mid-April (edit - I'd said March), and apparently there are a bunch of threads that came after that. I do plan to keep reading until I catch up to current, so that I can learn from your experiences. Wasn't planning to introduce myself until I was done, but that's kinda silly - don'cha think? So - Hi!
Before this, I had gone 3 years without dieting or weighing, and truly never planned to go on a diet again. I'd done so many over a lifetime, diets had stopped working. (The most recent I tried was Weight Watchers for about 6 months, but I did Atkins many many years ago.) I figured I'd blown out my metabolism, and should just get off the yo-yo once and for all.
Then three weeks ago today, I decided to stop drinking. (I'd been quit for a year and a half, then started again for 6 months or so, and was drinking WAY too much wine every night. So it was time to stop it.) "And while I'm at it", I thought, "maybe I'll go low-carb. But not all the time - maybe just 5 nights a week. Then I can eat whatever I want 2 nites a week. I wonder if anyone's ever had success with that?" Didn't know if it would help me lose any weight, but I was just eating so much sugar and crap that I thought it would be good to curb it. So I googled and found that mixing low-carb days and high-carb days is "a thing!" that is called "carb cycling". Then I googled "carb cycling" to find more info and came upon Carb Nite Solution, read all I could, and I'm right back on the diet hope wagon.
At least this is something that doesn't seem like torture to do forever, which I cannot say about WW! I like what I'm eating, and it fits easily in my lifestyle.
So I've been doing it for 20 days, and tonight will be my third Carb Nite - one at 10 days, then 2 at 5 days, to get me to a Saturday. Now I'll do Saturday or Sunday most weeks going forward unless there's an "occasion". I've read the book.
I still do not and will not weigh. I occasionally try measuring my waist, but I'm not sure how to do it right and always get different spots, so the measurements don't tell me anything. I'm guessing I'm somewhere around 250 or 260 lbs, and I wear a 2x top. My jeans are size 20, and were starting to get a bit tight. They're much more comfortable now, after almost 3 weeks eating this way, and I'm happy just judging by that. I spent a LONG time at 18 before going to 20, and have a lot of nice pants in that size. I'm very anxious to get back there!
Another in the "won't" category is "I won't count calories or anything other than carbs", so my progress won't be quite as fast as I'm sure it could be, but that's okay. I did keep a list of what I ate the first five days or so, and figured out the calories just to get an idea. I probably eat around 1900 calories on a PF day, and about 15 g carb. Carb Nite I'm not even considering guessing how many cals. I went from "I'll never diet again! PERIOD!" to "maybe I'll cut carbs to get away from so much sugar" to "let's do Carb Nite and hopefully by the end of the year I may be able to wear my size 18s again and if I stick there, so be it". I'm good with that thought process. Someday perhaps, once my body heals from all the crap I've put it through for 47 years, I'll become more focused in an attempt to get back into "regular" sizes and not have to try to find nice stuff in the Plus section. If it doesn't happen naturally from what I'm doing, if I have to purposely reduce calories or something, I'll think about that down the line.
I'm a 47 year old (birthday was June. I decided to get into better shape by 50) software developer at a bank, married 28 years to a wonderful man, no kids. We have 6 cats named Mufkin, Calie, Lugh, Pinky, Sebastian, and Garmin.
Tonight's Carb Nite'll start with two giant marshmallows to get rolling without fat, then deep dish pizza for dinner, a couple donuts as a snack
, and a little bowl of oatmeal before bed.
Whelp, that's my opening babble! Nice to meet you all!