Hi, Patty!
I understand completely what you are saying, because that was me when I started LC at the start of the year, too. I was out of control in epic proportions. Around the end of December, I sat down one evening with my boyfriend and ate an entire Sarah Lee frozen cheesecake by myself with a quart of egg nog. My boyfriend would never say anything negative to me about my eating, but when he saw all that I had eaten (after a huge dinner no less) he actually started to cry and told me he was worried I wouldn't be around for us to get married eventually.
So I started my LC journey. My boyfriend and I have a friend who lost a ton of weight last year on LC, and encouraged me to try. It was so hard at the start. You can find message board postings from me on this forum that say very much what you said...that I wanted to eat like "normal" people. But the truth is...and this is hard for all of us food lovers to handle..."normal" people don't eat like we do, and even those who seem to eat a ton and never gain an ounce are usually not *healthy!*
Of course, I didn't listen to any of that when I was starting out. I promised myself I'd give LC one year. Its just one year, right? If I really don't feel better after a year, then I have the rest of my life to eat junk if that's what I wanted. But something started to change. I cut out more LC junk...reduced my cheeses, bacon, and nuts. I started eating more natural foods. Suddenly, my daily focus was no longer on food, it was on being healthy. Carb binges now make me extremely sick, and the whole time I'm eating the carby stuff I'm realizing it doesn't really taste any better than meat and veggies. My appetite hasn't changed, but I no longer fret over what I can and can't eat. Two weeks ago, I made the leap to primal, eating only meat and green veg, as an experiment for a month. I can honestly say that I have never, ever felt better in my life. I no longer lay awake at night with panic attacks, thinking about taping a will to the fridge in case I died in my sleep. I think my biggest motivator when I'm craving, is thinking about my 5 year old son finding me dead in the morning from a heart attack with no one to care for him. It might sound morbid, but it is a distinct possibility with my weight where it is.
The bottom line is, we will all eventually have to lose this weight. It may not affect us directly today, but it will make tomorrow even harder. You can try the calorie restriction route, but that rarely works long-term for most people. The one thing I could suggest is to maybe get a copy of the Protein Power Lifeplan. The Eades do advocate a low carb lifestyle, but there is one plan in there (hedonistic I think) that still allows you to eat some carby things as long as it is under 40g per day, and no more than 10g per meal with an emphasis on protein.
Good luck, and don't give up. :hug:
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