That's fabulous, Tiggerlou! Keep going! It sounds like you're headed right out of the Turtle Club. I know what you mean about being afraid to say that something is finally working. I've had that same experience, multiple times, of thinking I found what was causing all of my problems, only to find that four or five days later, it seemed to quit working and I was back to square one (sometimes minus one, or two or three). But you really sound like you're well on your way on the road to success. I really believe that one way or another, each of us has a way that low carbing will work for us. We just need to figure out how to tweak it to fit us individually.
Sallyd, just keep trying. Gosh, I know just what you mean about a bad day. I have many days with cravings that I can't explain since I eat nothing that should produce them. That was one of the hard lessons I learned with AS, along with a few added pounds. But even when I have no cravings that are driving me buggy, I'm still obsessed with food. I have had a few blessed moments when I felt totally liberated from food obsessions, but they've been few, far between, and short lived. I refuse to give up, though. I know that low carbing is the only way to keep myself from falling back into eating sugar like nothing else exists, and even though I don't always eat the healthiest low carb diet, it's far healthier than I was eating either as a low cal/low fat dieter or when I wasn't dieting at all.
TeriDoodle, it's been a long, rough road that's brought me to eating like this. Belive me, I know that when I cut my carbs below 10, I'm not getting enough nutrients from vegetables. I know I'm not getting enough protein, especially since I work out so much. But I just don't seem to be able to lose any other way. Like I said, I only do it for a few days, and then I add back some vegetables and protein and cut back the fat to control the calories. I do that for a few days, and then switch back again. I've only been doing this for a couple of weeks now, but it seems to be working (hope I don't jinx this like everything else). I don't know what else to do. When I tried eating the way you suggested, I gained. I don't think I have unrealistic expectations. At this time last year, when I was living the low cal/low fat life, I weighed a pretty stable 123. I think I looked great. Most of my cellulite was gone for the first time since I was probably a teenager, and my upper arms actually stopped looking like wings. Problem was, I was eating way too much low fat candy, and I was doing it at the expense of eating enough protein, and that was how I was controlling my weight. Eventually, my house of cards began to collapse, and my weight began to creep up because I couldn't keep my sugar consumption under control. At 126, I started low carbing, and I made every mistake I could have possibly made. I've gone as high as 133 (I'm 129 right now) since I started this WOE, and I've cut out more things from my diet than I ever thought I'd be able to. But every time I manage to lose a few pounds, either what I'm doing quits working, or I start having terrible food cravings and I eat too much. I always eat too much of legal foods, but too much is still too much, and I start gaining again. The truth? I think the only thing that keeps me from giving up is that I feel like I've reached the end of the line. If I gain back all of the weight I lost on low cal, I'll never be able to lose it again. If I can't take off 6 or 7 pounds just to get back where I started, and keep it off, much less the few extra I wanted to drop, I'll never be able to get rid of 25. I am so grateful that low carbing has released me from uncontrollable food cravings that drove me to eat all of the high carb foods that dominated my life. That is reason enough to stay with this WOE. I might still overeat and still want to eat "bad" foods sometimes, but I can keep myself from doing it, which I didn't used to be able to do. Wow! I sure can prattle on.
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