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Old Wed, Dec-12-18, 15:08
M Levac M Levac is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 6,498
 
Plan: VLC, mostly meat
Stats: 202/200/165 Male 5' 7"
BF:
Progress: 5%
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fred42
As said, LC helps reduce cravings by smoothing out the blood sugar swings. A couple of other things are helpful to me.

1. Learning to crave and enjoy fat. After decades of using paper towels to press every drop of fat out of cooked ground beef, pre-trimming/skinning meats, and buying only lean meats you get conditioned into hating the taste and texture of fat. You have to reconnect with your inner caveman and start loving this to the point of obsession.

2. I don't find keto imitations of carb foods helpful. That is, keto versions of bread, pasta, rice, pizza, cookies, bars, ice cream, sweet drinks, etc. These were the addiction triggers. I prefer to develop disgust for these things and view them as symbols of my past oppression, abuse and attempted murder. As a bonus, when you drop these things, meal prep is a lot easier and cheaper. Do recovering alcoholics drink their milk from shot glasses? Do ex-smokers carry a lighter around?

Important points, I think. Personally, I felt more at ease when I kept a full pack of smokes that time I quit. I imagine the fact that my pack is running low is a stimulus that drives the craving, and this would get stronger if I didn't have any. So, one pack shut that down, allowing me to focus on the other aspects of quitting. I also used the patch and learned that it can fail if we don't understand how it works and don't apply it properly so it doesn't provide us with the nicotine it should. The patch took care of the physiological effect while I delt with the psychological stuff like all the associated behaviors that trigger the craving.

I had to learn all about eating fat and enough of it. I went overboard with it at some points, not that it's a bad thing cuz I learned my limits which are quite high if I listen to anybody I tell about it. Your lunch was a stick of butter?!? I experimented and learned to enjoy raw meat, raw fat, lots of fat, eating the fat first, not chewing so much and gobbling it down, etc. I'm not sure I learned to crave fat, but I certainly learned to enjoy it in much larger quantities and variety than I used to. I imagine it helped that when I ate lots of fat I felt a little better than when I didn't, so there's the physiological effect again.

I did develop disgust for a few things I used to chomp down like a big mac and their fries. Maybe they've always tasted like that, I just craved them so much less that I could now actually realise how tasteless that crap really is. Sawdust, glue? Something like that.
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