Here's mine...

I posted this in my journal, but thought it would be fun to share and hear about other people's 'carb creep' experiences.

Sara's Carb Creep Lessons:
-------------------------
1. Goop on thick blue cheese or ranch dressings onto salads and meats
2. Add something like alfredo sauce to a breakfast scramble
3. Eat sausage patties with breakfast
4. Eat sliced deli meats - they ALL have some carbs
5. Cheese on every meal - cheese on eggs in the morning, cheese at lunch and melted cheese on dinner - also slices of cheese during the day as a 'snack'.
6. Add nuts and avocado to salads, also add lots of onions and tons of tomatoes, then goop on the thick dressing - so as not to be able to even see the salad underneath all the add-ons.
7.Use sour cream, guacamole, shredded cheese and salsa on mexican style foods, again so as not to even see the spiced meat underneath all the goop.
8. When bored or lonely - eat a bunch of nuts...like the whole can.
9. Use tons of mayo in tuna and egg salads, goop mayo onto meats. Be sure it's the store bought kind so as to ensure a dubious carb count.
10. Invent new uses for cream cheese and whipping cream - creating meals such as baked pork chops with Boursin cheese, mushrooms and tons of whipping cream. Make Donald's Awesome Chicken Broccoli Casserole with twice the cheese called for in his recipe...call it "low carb".
11. Try out some of the "low carb" dessert recipes, especially for special occasions, but then like the recipe so much, make it again and again in the following weeks (this happened with 4Bean's pumpkin bars recipe).
12. Decide you really like 4Bean's maple cream cheese icing on the said pumpkin bars, and make bowls of it several evenings in a row...eat it out of the fridge...pretending to eat only a tablespoon's worth, going into denial about the fact that the bowl's pretty much empty the next morning...leave bowl in the fridge so as not to admit to having eaten it all.
13. Make fancy spiced/sweetened nuts in the crockpot for Thanksgiving, but make so much that they're in the house for weeks afterwards - snack on these all day long
14. Eat 1/2 cup or more of sauteed mushrooms with almost every meal, and consider it merely a garnish.
15. Consider sliced avocado as 'just a garnish' too.
16. Eat Carb Control (ha ha ha) fudgesicles three or four times weekly
17. Drink wine with dinner three or four times weekly
18. Discover a specialty nut shop in the Boston airport - sold by the pound or half pound - buy a whole pound of several varieties in case you get hungry on the flight home.
19. Become friendly with fancy salami - genoa salami, hard salami or what have you - it looks really low carb...but if you want carb creep, be sure to eat the whole package at once.
20. Make Karen's fabulous spinach, bacon, tomato salad - but use twice as much bacon, and ignore the fact that the unsalted peanuts are 'optional' - use twice as many roasted peanuts as called for
21. Discover that those big bags of cubed cheese - are the perfect size and shape for making 'cheese chips' in the microwave - dip these into sour cream to counteract the saltiness of the chips - eat at least 12 of these while sitting in front of the computer
22. Make 'sandwiches' out of cheese slices - put mayo and a dill pickle slice in between the two slices. Eat a plateful of these in the afternoon between lunch and dinner
23. Decide that no food is 'good enough' without gooping on all manner of accompaniments - sour cream, guacamole, blue cheese dressing, shredded cheese, nuts, onions, alfredo sauce, whipping cream...whatever. Get to the point where you forget what the food underneath actually tastes like.
24. Buy 3-5 litres of heavy cream a week, and use it to cook with regularly
25. Use up that cream, but let the baby spinach go bad in the fridge.
26. Pay no attention to spice blends...it's just a spice right? Coat meats in spice blends that have trans fats in them and a carb count of 1 gram per 1/4 teaspoon serving.

Wonder why you're in this really long "stall"....

And finally - complain loudly and often about how "Low Carb doesn't work".

Wow, good ones.

1. Add lots of salsa to food.
2. Eat just the meat and sauce when you make spaghetti (tons of sugar)
3. A handful of macadamia nuts, every hour.

Your list just about covered it all for me
I can add one:
eating "just" the pizza toppings, I should stop at just one slice!

Hi, I.m a total newbie on this site as well as with LC.

I have been doing some of those things... and I thought it was ok!!

Mayo? bad????

Carb control ice cream bars? bad??

Blue cheese and ranch dressing? Bad??

I feel like I could cry now.. I thought i was doing well, but I'm not sure I even know what I am doing now....


Please help... explain what you mean.

Thank you so much!

( I have read protein power, not the atkins revolution...)

Hi there lillyfil,

No need to worry - there isn't really anything wrong with eating the things on my 'list' but you can run into problems if you stop measuring your portions, and find yourself getting complacent about these things. That's what happened to me.

I was still 'doing' low-carb, but I'd inadvertently cruised into more of a maintenance plan, rather than a weight-loss plan because of the things I listed here a few months ago. My weight loss stalled for a very long time.

You can have cheese, you can have mayo, you can have ranch and you can have blue cheese. It's just that sometimes (well, in my case anyway) these things have a way of getting out of hand.

Watch things like nuts and dairy carbs like a hawk. Be sure to measure out portions and read and re-read the guidelines in the plan that you're following when it comes to these foods. In fact, don't even think of these things as 'foods' but rather, as occasional condiments.

Hope that helps.

Oh, and keep in mind, a person just starting out with low-carb is going to lose weight like mad, because of the sudden change in eating (drop in carb intake), and it's important to keep yourself satisfied with lots of tasty low-carb foods until you get used to eating this way. I did find that I ate a lot more in the beginning, until the carb cravings subsided and I began to experience the famed appetite-suppressing effects of low-carb eating. So eat whatever you need to eat within the parameters of your plan, and in a couple of weeks, you'll notice a big change in your appetite, as well as your energy level - significantly decreased appetite, and a big increase in overall energy.

Keep reading and re-reading your low-carb book, and get another one to round out your understanding of how low-carb works. Stay away from the ice cream bars if you can.

No need to cry - because it's actually pretty important to feel satisfied with what you're eating when you're just starting out. If that means mayo, ranch and blue cheese, then so be it. Just keep an eye on portion sizes. Geeze, when I started out, I was eating tons of food - and it was because my body was going through serious cravings for all the carbs I suddenly wasn't eating. Allowing myself the luxury of little filet mignon bites dipped into blue cheese dressing kept me 'on plan'.

The appetite suppression will kick in within about a week, especially if you're careful about the carb counts and portion sizes, being sure not to go 'over' your daily limits. Then, you won't find yourself 'clutching' at food so much.

Hang in there - this is going to work.

My post in here is more about what can happen down the road, when you stop measuring, and when you stop paying attention. When you think you're following plan, but really aren't. When the carbs start creeping up and up...hence, the term 'carb creep'.

Eat low-carb chocolates as a treat...daily.

This is why I'm actually glad that so many of the 'low carb' products are off the market now. My old favourite, "Reese's One Carb Peanut Butter Cups" are nowhere to be found, and I think this is a good thing!

I wish this was a case here! We still have them on our shelves at Target!!!

Carb creep is when I confuse the definition of "tablespoon" with "cup". This applied to all foods!

Also, when I say "I deserve this LC ice cream. I will have 3 tablespoons" (see above definition issue).

Julie

Funny, a lot of the things on your list are precisely what help me avoid carb creeps. That list is more like calorie creep. Piling lots of dressing and avocado on a salad would make me so full, I probably wouldn't have to eat again that day. But where my problem often lies is with failing to decide WHAT it is I'm watching. I can eat a fairly high number of carbs as long as I'm keeping the overall calories low, for example on hot/humid days where I'd rather have more V8 and salads, less grease. Similarly, I can load up on 2500 calories worth of fat, easily, and not gain weight - as long as I keep the carbs almost nil and spread evenly through the day. What kills me is getting those philosophies mixed up, losing focus, and justifying eating just about anything.

My biggest carb creeps: a taste of something, since a taste isn't a serving. ( ) Free food, since free food isn't really food. ( )

If I ate low-carb chocolate every day, I would have the runs so bad that I couldn't leave the house.

Since I just started I found out that I need to be careful. For lunch I chopped some turkey then I started piling on the mayonnaise. I stopped and thought, this isn't a free for all here, so I scrapped off some of the mayonnaise to a reasonable amount, not half the jar!

It's a learning experience

This is good - because I'm *finally* noticing the same thing. I cut out dairy altogether a few weeks back, and have noticed that I'm intolerant to dairy products (haven't yet figured out if it's casein or lactose). I also read somewhere that sometimes when you're intolerant to a particular food - you crave it. That's what was happening with me - I couldn't control my portions very well when it came to things like cream, sour cream, creamy dressings and cheese.

That said, since dropping the dairy - I've been able to eat loads more vegetables and the weight loss finally started happening again. It took me awhile to wrap my brain around the idea that although there are carbs in vegetables - they really don't hinder weight loss at all. In fact, I've found the opposite.

And yet, if I weren't so 'crave-y' about dairy foods, I'm sure I would have found the same thing - that these foods might have helped me stick to plan because of how satisfying they are.

I do think you're right about the fact that my list is not just 'carb creep' but perhaps 'calorie creep' as well.

One of these days, I'll force myself to start utilizing the My P.L.A.N. feature here and see just what it is that is finally working. Where my carbs and calories are.

Thank you Kristine for explaining this 'mixing up of philosophies' - it makes a whole lot of sense.

I'm just really grateful that those sf candies have sugar alcohols as i can't over do it with them or I suffer BIG TIME. Did it once and wont do it again! They are there when I feel I abosutely need something sweet right away and to be honest that doesn't happen that often.
Leah

So doing all of these things make you just stall? - so you're not actually gaining weight from doing this stuff, you're just no longer losing weight??