Mon, Jan-24-11, 18:18
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Senior Member
Posts: 417
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Plan: Less than 30 grams a day
Stats: 259/241/155
BF:Yes
Progress: 17%
Location: WA
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It's Good to Learn I'm Not Crazy!
Hello Everyone,
I'm sure this post will be long but bear with me and my story and how I came to be sitting here posting on this forum for the first time.
I will turn 50 this year. I am 5'9" and weigh 256 lbs as of this morning which is actually a good thing because last Thursday I weighed 258.6. My highest weight ever was 278 lbs about 3 years ago. I am married to my husband of 28 years and we have 3 grown children, two of which still live at home and are both very overweight (ages 19 & 22). My husband has never had a weight issue until the last few years and he has fluctuated between 10-30 lbs extra over that time.
I have been overweight since about age 5 so roughly 45 years of gains and losses and more "diets" than I would even like to admit to. With a few of them I actually did lose weight but gained it all back shortly after hitting my goal and then I'd start all over again.
About six years ago I was diagnosed insulin resistant. A few months later I went on the Atkins plan and went the no-carb route. The weight started melting off and I felt really good. Three months into my new found way of eating I developed bleeding in one kidney. That brought on a very lengthy and painful round of all kinds of tests including a very invasive kidney biopsy. I think I had five specialists I was seeing at that point all of whom were trying to figure out why my kidney kept bleeding. Of course I told all of the doctors I was on a no-carb plan and of course they all gave me a hard time about how dangerous that is.
When all the tests came back negative and all those specialists were stumped to explain why my kidney kept bleeding, they all basically started pointing their finger at my no-carb eating. They blamed it on too much protein and told me that the fat in my diet was going to give me heart disease (which has been the biggest cause of death in my family members by the way).
Well, I believed them. They are specialists right? So I began eating carbs again and in a flash, I put all the weight back on and then some and after about a month my kidney stopped bleeding. All the doctors were like "see? we told you so!".
From that point on I was convinced carbs were good but two key things happened to me after that. One, my kidney bled twice more over the next two years for about 2 months both times and within two years of being diagnosed as insulin resistant I had full blown Type II diabetes. But hey, the docs said to eat carbs so I did and didn't think twice about it. I had numerous friends go low-carb over the years since my experience and I told every single one of them how bad it was for the kidneys and that eating like that would kill them just as suredly as a high fat diet would. Again, I was going off of what the experts had told me.
Fast forward to 2010. By June of last year I weighed 264 pounds and still didn't have my blood sugars under good control (A1c of 7.1). I was on a statin for cholesterol, two diabetes drugs, and two high blood pressure drugs and was miserable and my whole body hurt all the time. I felt like I was 100 years old and just getting through a day was a drag on my energy.
So I decided to change my eating habits and commit to eating clean, whole foods that were low fat, lean protein and high fiber. Sound familiar? That led me to join WeightWatchers for like the 6th time but this time I stuck with it and tracked my points and bought everything fat free and ate all kinds of "healthy" whole grain products. I was completely frustrated the entire time from June until January of this year. I would sometimes lose but then gain some back and at one point was stuck at the same weight for 3 months.
Through it all everyone on the WW site told me "it's okay, it's normal to plateau for long periods of time" or "you just need to exercise more" or "are you sure you're tracking all your points??". I know they meant well and wanted to be supportive but I just knew something was wrong. How could I work this hard at changing my lifestyle and still no payoff in terms of weight. I certainly felt better than I had when I started but where was the weight loss? Why were my blood sugar levels still up and down like a seesaw? Why do I still have high cholesterol, triglycerides and high blood pressure?
By January of this year I realized that after 6 months of change and effort I had lost a total of 5.4 pounds! The realization just crushed me. I convinced myself that I was destined to be fat forever because I can honestly say I didn't know what else to do. But having nothing left in my arsonal to try I decided I just had to exercise more and eat less so two weeks ago that's exactly what I did. I ate a few less points and upped my exercise and when weigh-in day came I was hoping for a 2lb loss. I jumped on the scale and to my horror, I had gained 4lbs over that week. That just broke me.
The very next day I came home from work and there on the table was the latest issue of Reader's Digest and right there on the front cover was the article labeled "Eat This, Lose Weight - The New Science of Dieting". I couldn't read it fast enough and the whole article was based on science journalist Gary Taubes. The whole jist of the article was low-carb eating.
Well nothing I had done in the last 5 years had worked so I started to reconsider low-carb eating which led me to Amazon.com which led me to purchase a new book by Dr. Jonny Bowden called "Low Carb Living". I got the book last week and nearly read the whole thing in one night. It was the most fascinating book on the subject I've read to date and best of all...it made complete sense to me. I suddenly understood why I can't get this weight off and that I'm really not different than everyone else, just uneducated on how carbs affect my whole body!
That was it for me. On Thursday last week I cut my carb intake way back and now it's Monday and already some amazing things have happened.
1. I couldn't resist and weighed myself this morning. Down 2.5 lbs in 4 days. That is nearly half of what I lost in total after 6 months on WW's.
2. I already feel more energized. I haven't wanted an afternoon nap since Thursday!
3. My blood sugars are evening out and staying within a much tighter range.
4. I feel like the fog is gone from inside my head. I feel more alert and overall more happy in general.
5. I am actually eating less than I was when counting points...and without hunger!
So here I am on this forum. I can already tell that I am not going to get the support and information I need on the WW's site. I'm not knocking WW's. It does work for some people but clearly I'm not one of them. I'm seriously thinking about dropping my membership because I suddenly find their whole message counterintuitive to what I now know I need to do.
What I need is information, like-minded people to share information with and learn from and I need support. And I think this is a good place to start after reading many posts on here. What I don't need are nay-sayers telling me how fat is going to kill me.
I am not, at least at this point following any particular plan. I am counting carbs and aiming to stay under 30 grams per day. I haven't had time to explore the available plans out there. All I know is I had to cut my carb intake immediately.
So here I go down this new path to health and wellness. I am scheduled to visit the doctor on Wednesday this week to get my latest A1c, cholesterol, etc,. numbers which is good because it will give me a recent benchmark to track my progress.
If you got to the end of this post, thank you for hearing my story. I know mine is not that much different than so many others but I think everyone has something unique to add to the discussion just by telling their story. We all learn from our own experiences and the experiences of others right? And a whole lot of good information is good too!
Best of all...I now know I'm not crazy and there really is a reason for all this frustration and bad health I've been going through!
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