I wanted a thread where you could be on any WOE that you choose and have a loving caring group of people to support you! It doesn't matter to me what WOE you are doing as long as you want to be with a group of people who care about your success. Hope to see people come join us and have a good time loosing!!!

Today after weighing myself and I am happily surprised that I have not gained over the holidays which is a plus in itself.

This past year has been a big learning experience with this WOE and I really am honestly shocked at how easy it has been to eat this way with just a little planning.

I have to say that I really feel healthier than I have in quite a long time. I love that I am not leaning over a basketball (stomach) anymore to tie my shoes. It really is the small things like crossing my legs without effort or pulling up a pair of pants without anything lapping over and not too many stomach lumps below the shirt anymore.

It truly is a journey trying to figure everything out, not only what food to eat or not eat but the vitamins, the cooking, which restaurants to trust or how to pick and choose the best options etc...

The lifestyle that came with eating this way has been really easy once I set my mind to it. And that is really what it is all about, setting my mind and setting the course.

Never have I ever felt deprived in this WOE.
I really feel like all the vegetables I've been eating with my clean meats over the last year will really make a huge difference in my overall health in the future.

I can't even imagine not eating this way now.

I totally feel the same way. I don't care how you do it; I just want people to be successful.

I do keto. I cheated on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. My 1st cheats since I started June 1st. And I'm still up 4.5lbs. It needs to go. Trying to get my daily steps close to 10k and exercise some every day this month. And of course, start losing weight again and get to my goal by summer.

I cheated a little bit too but not too much. Mostly it was a little Crown Royal in my coffee on Christmas eve and New Years eve. I cooked all of both dinners and ate no high carb anything. My carbs were from low-carb spinach dip, low carb but still carbs- cocktail sauce for boiled shrimp. It's mostly a lot of little things that added up.

I am all over the new Atkins 40 plan. Not to eat Atkins frozen foods but because I can easily lose on 40g carbs at day. There is no way I have found to do the <20g carb thing long term. Not me. I did 20-80 carbs a day (or thereabouts) back in 2003 I think. Have tried several times in the 11 years since. 40g is doable. For me. For now. I have another week on induction before I venture out to the 40g world.

That's an excellent idea. Not everyone wants to do 20g for ever.
I think we need to eat healthy foods to loose and personally I like Atkins frozen foods as an added back up to keep on track if need be.

Oh how I love this thread. I actually stopped hanging out on this board because I couldn't stand the "if your not doing it my way your wrong" mentality. I'm in - plan on seeing me alot. I went haywire this holiday season. But stayed relatively gluten free because when I didn't I really paid the price. I need to get my a** back on track (because it doesn't need to get any bigger!!).

Happy New Year!!

Yay, I think this thread is going to be a fun one, Lucky!
We're all headed in the same direction and that's the only thing that matters.

O.K. I'm in. Who doesn't want support and encouragement?? Great idea Meme, and thanks for starting this thread just when I needed it and I'm getting in early.
The trick for me is staying with it. My bad habits are to avoid coming around when I don't eat well and feel bad about myself. I'm doing Atkins, try to stay pretty strict when I do it, like the 20 gms or less only because that's what works for me. I feel great, energetic, and best of all thinner. Why wouldn't I want to stick to it? I'm actually excited about getting going again.

What motivates me is grocery shopping and having a huge variety of veggies and enough variety of fatty fresh meat, bacon, sausage, eggs, cheeses, cream etc.
I like to know I have snacks if I want them like cream cheese rolled in a deli meat with grean onions sprinked in.
Or plain old pork rinds that are always good for a good crunch and I also make the most heavenly oven fried chicken with them.
Seaweed/nori snacks for those like me who like sushi. It comes in a small box and is Asian flavored and great for a quick flavor bang. From time to time I like a pickle spear with a piece of deli corn beef slice wrapped around it and you can dip it in mayo.
I love cream with my Starbucks home ground coffee for dessert.
So those are some things that work for me.

I also want to pick up some more Atkins frozen dinners. They are invaluable for a quick on plan meal when there is no time and I HAVE to eat.

There was a time (many years ago) when I was fairly chatty on these boards (see Indian thing top left and message count) but I am guessing I have only put a few hundred on in the last few years. Yeah, I started Atkins in 2003. I know most of how to do a clean induction and what that entails for me. I lost a bit over 100 pounds in 7 months doing 20 - 80g carbs. Most clean. Big man. Big loss. Probably would not work the same for a smaller person. Plus I was younger by 11 years. I have had my diets manipulated by various doctor teams over the last 8+ years as we had screwed my liver (and who knows what else) into the ground on pain meds for some old wounds. Some enzymes were 8000x out of whack. So we manipulated input and monitored output (urine and blood tests) every week or two for years. Finally all was back to normal a couple of years ago. I have been shifted to low fat and lower calorie and low carb (under 150 by their definition) diets since then every couple of months. I now have a handful of diets I can use. Any or all. My choice as long as I keep getting checked every 3 months. So, I convinced them to let me play LC again. At my size and with my co-morbidities everyone agrees that me losing weight is paramount. So, here I am. Knowing I can do this but with the will to do it as well.
I am glad to be in the mindset of reconnecting to folx on this board. Thanks for having me aboard.

Well you know how you mentioned the different ways of loosing weight, what I've thought about before is that there is only so much food in the world to choose from. Most weight loss plans seem to have the basics of meat and vegetables and then we add to it after that. Adding either carbs and lowering fats or lowering carbs and raising fats. There are so many names for all of the different WOEs but it's basically all the same thing.
For me, the beauty of Ketosis is lowering the appetite and killing the cravings. That is a gift but also can be a curse because I believe that to make this work for a lifetime, I have to eat and not skip that part and eating well as Atkins said.
In other words, eating for the nutrition and the weight loss second.

yup - I found out the hard way. Right before I started "cheating" I was pretty much eating nothing. I wasn't really hungry and my diet consisted of coffee and peanut butter. Looking back it's no wonder I felt like crap all the time. I have to be careful that I don't slip back into that and I also have to be mindful of what I am actually eating.

The few times I have been in Ketosis, it's amazing how my appetite was absent, and I had to make myself eat more veges. I could eat the meat and skip the veges, but what you have said, Meme and Lucky 26, it's important to make sure we add them for health reasons as well as a little variety.
I've also experienced just thinking about another piece of meat almost nauseating and consider becoming a vegetarian when all I've been eating for weeks is meet. I wonder if that's a natural body reaction screaming out for something different! :-)

Hi Mister E, I remember you, or your Indian icon from years ago when I was on here also. Glad you are back and for your health and well being this is the place for you! I don't have as much weight to lose but the point is to be healthy so it's cool that we can all do it together no matter the numbers on the scale.