This is a great thread I was reading on ASDLC. I was thinking of starting it here...and maybe I will!

Low-carb Newbie Mistakes...

My biggest mistakes? After lurking on ASDLC and reading about all the whipping cream and artificially sweetened desserts that were eaten on Atkins - oh how naive I was - I decided to start doing the same, after being super-successful with Protein Power. Big mistake!

Karen

Great idea, Karen!!

My mistake was in eating too little!!

I wasn't getting in enough carbs. Once someone pointed that out to me.... I added in some veggies and the weight started coming off again!!
I still have a problem sometimes... because I always feel full. But I manage to keep my carbs between 20- 25 and I'm steadily dropping a pound at a time!!

Ellie

My biggest mistake:

To think I could relax over the holidays and then think I wouldn't want carbs again. Duh

Like quitting smoking. To go without for such a time. Then to think one can take one puff and it won't bother you.

When will I learn

Me too, I thought I could relax over the holidays and easily get back to LC eating, but it took me weeks to recover! Also thinking that my Lo-Carb bars actually had only 2g carbs, but finding out that there were at least 20g of hidden carbs

These are the biggest so far, and it's only been a few months! Live and learn!!

I'm glad to see that all the "oldsters" here did not make any mistakes when they were low-carbing "newbies".

Amazing!

Karen

Mistakes? Me? Ah, had I but world enough and time....

My Journal is full of mistakes, trips, stumbles, falls, u-turns, rethinks, flubs and flops.

I think my biggest mistake was trying to do everything at once. I'm bright and capable, right? So I can get a book and follow everything to the letter instantly, right? Unfortunately, going from no structure, not eating three meals a day, eating only junk food and sandwiches and drinking soda, not drinking water, not exercising, not taking supplements -- it takes more than a day to change all that.

Close runner up -- plan hopping. This hasn't worked for six minutes, try That.

Still learning But down 19 pounds since November 1.

Oh let's see...thinking I would never plateau (that was for other people)...malitol-sweetened chocolate bars on anything like a regualar basis was WAY too much (see above about the plateau). Apparently I can also say the same about mock danishes ... these things are now only very strict treats for me. The first and second times I tried to lose weight, I weighed myself 3 or 4 times a day. The number became more important than anything else. This time, I had my husband hide the scale and had to deal with seeing changes in other areas of my body and psyche.

Lisa

My biggest mistake was thinking I could be vegetarian again. Just plain does not work for me.

Also that Fit for Life eating fruit first in the morning is a no-no. Sets me up for bizarre blood sugar swings all day. GIVE ME PROTEIN!!! GRRRR!

Eating fruit by itself is not at all wise. I must balance it with protein and fat. Like 1/2 c blueberries with 1/3 c yogurt, 1 t flax oil. Or an apple and 6 soaked pecans.

Also I have to be careful of fruit intake altogether. Only 1 serving per day is best, from the lower glycemic choices.

I admire all you Atkins followers and don't want to offend with all this talk of "forbidden fruit". I'm very happy with Schwarzbein and it works well for me but I have to be careful.

And although I'm nowhere near advocating low-fat, it works better for me if I don't go hawg wild with it. I like to use just enough, not more. When I was drowning everything in 3 Tablespoons of flax oil each day, I put on weight but that may have been due to that horrible fruit in the morning thing.

And I just recently found out I should abstain from even the occasional cup of coffee. *sigh* My system just can't take it. It makes me feel edgy and sets up cravings that lead me astray. So no more coffee and whipped cream treats for me!

I am fairly new and Karen mentioned that she was eating deserts with whipped cream like the Atkins Diet. I do the same what is the problem with it. I have cream in my coffee and a desert at night with cream like ice cream. Is that why I still haven't lost weight? My ketones are moderate.

Let's see:

1) Nuts: I can fall into a jar of peanut butter with a spoon & can't stop....Raw almonds - I luv em and can eat 2 cups without even thinking about it.
2) "legal" desserts with cr cheese, whipping cream, AS, yadda, yadda, yadda. Does the whole batch count as 1 serving?
3) In the first month of Atkins, falling into the old 'low fat' way of thinking. It's awfully hard to beat the LF ways out of our systems, isn't it?

My oldster problems: eating way too much of legal treats, nuts, etc. I don't eat high carb foods, I just eat like a pig with legal LC food. AARRRRGGHHHH!

But since I've started BFL, I'm much better about what I eat. Why? Well, I'm working out 6 days a week, getting out of bed ~ 5:45 am on work days to hit the gym b4 work. There are 2 promises to myself at work here: 1) If I'm working at exercise that hard (and losing sleeptime ) then I'm not going to fail on the dietary side of things: I have an incentive to eat right and stay on plan. 2) And if I'm sticking to LC, no cheats or bad choices, then no way will I miss a workout. I had to remind myself of this only yesterday morning.

Good thread, Karen. I wonder how many more 'oldsters' you can flush out of the woods?

...my biggest mistake. After I get settled into this new wol, and the cravings are subsiding, thinking that I can resist anything! I am invincible! Cookies and cake cannot touch me, for my cravings have disappeared! I will make my family a pie for dessert tonight and I will not touch it. Of course, I did touch it. I touched everything! It was a hard lesson to learn, that even though I am not craving it, that doesn't mean I can go hang out at the bakery and not be affected. Overconfidence got me into a lot of trouble!
Tama

Karen, surely you jest! This semi-oldster has mistakes galore--including the recurring mistake of wanting quick results on the scale and so losing focus on the process and how much better I feel.

Ruth, yes, one batch does count as one serving , especially with LC cheesecake. In fact, I discovered it tastes pretty good raw, too...lol. No reason to wait for that one "serving" to get cooked! (can we say "trigger food?")

A little too late for me! Would you believe I JUST finished my first ever sugar-free jello with whipped cream? I was soooooo excited and it tasted sooooo good! I thought I was being good?! I can still taste the strawberry in my mouth.... and now I just finished reading Karen's "mistake" . Wow, what timing. Well, gotta laugh. I'll know not to repeat this mistake now. It will explain a lag in weight loss over the next few days I guess. Thanks Karen and everyone else for the warnings.

jan9, i had the same question. now, i've loaned my dandr book to my new son-in-law and can't reference a page number for you, but there is a place where d a advises that if you aren't losing, cut back a bit on fats. he says that perhaps we have taken him too literally about the fatty luxuries of this diet. i think you will find the pages referenced in the index.

hope this helps. my best friend's father used to say, "all things in moderation" and i believe it's a motto that could take the grief out of a lot of these situations.

The "thang" about moderation is that with food addicts or compulsive overeaters, there is no such thing as moderation. There are trigger foods that can set us off, and it doesn't matter if they are LC or not.

If you know yourself well enough to know that you are not an addict or CE, a little bit of something in moderation is fine. It's when you keep on going back to nibble on something sweet for example or make or eat sweets everyday that you're in trouble.

Karen

Well said!

One of my errors in the beginning was believing that low carbohydrate products are low in carbohydrates. I also had a problem with a low-fat fanatic who was doing a fair amount of the cooking and LYING about whether the sauce had been thickened with a bit of flour, whether there wasn't a bit of sugar in the salad dressing, etc. Beware of sabateurs! (And cook for yourself if you live with one.)

Allison

I've only been on LC since January 2 and I've already made almost all these mistakes....sugar free desserts, switching plans, weighing every day, not eating enough, thinking I am invincible......


I've lost ten pounds, but it seems every day is a struggle. I'm not really having cravings or feeling overly hungry, it just seems like the LC way is so much trouble sometimes. It is soo easy to have coffee and doughnuts for breakfast, grab a hamburger for lunch, and sit in front of the TV and snack for three or four hours every evening!

My husband is getting bored and starting to rebel a little. I know if he caves I won't be able to go it alone.

Does it ever get easier?

It does, it does!

Remember the last time you had to learn something that seemed toatlly foriegn to you?

For me, it was driving because I learned how to drive 10 years ago. I was a die-hard passenger! It never even occured to me to learn how to drive.

First, I failed my learners permit twice. When I finally obtained it, I went to a very good driving school. There was classroom instruction and driving lessons. During my first lesson after driving around the neighborhood, the instructor took me on to a major road! I couldn't even tell where I was, stuff was going by me so quickly and my head was spinning from her instructions. It took a couple of months to learn and I even had to take extra lessons. During my road test, I encountered a configuration that I had never seen before and did the wrong thing, but because I did well on the rest of the test, I passed. Whew!

It's the same with LC. All is so new and strange and complicated at first. Your learning a new mindset, watching for "signs" and "signals", hitting dead ends and speed bumps, speeding and travelling the speed limit. Sometimes you drive under the speed limit!

It takes a while to figure everything out. As you go along figuring, you will develop a great new skill and a wonderful way of life. You will also be thinner, saner and healthier to boot!

Anything that challenges you - as well as improves your quality of life - is worthwhile learning. It's a frame of mind that as adults, we forget about what a joy it is to accomplish something we've never even thought of. LC makes you think. LC makes you get off your butt.

For some reason, I took to LC like a duck to water. Probably because it had a lot to do with food and eating!

Karen

Karen,

Thank you! It's really great to have a personal reply when you're feeling kind of down and discouraged. And your comparison really hits home with me! I never learned to drive until I was 30 years old. Like you, I had to take classes and it was so hard. I made many mistakes, had to take to test three times. And the first year I had more accidents that any teenager.

But now it's easy...as a matter of fact I can easily make the 12 miles to town with a coke in one hand and a candy bar in the other

Carolyn

For me it was a Coke, a smoke, and a bag of ju-jubes! I've been rear ended twice, but I've never caused an accident and never been pulled over for speeding either!

LC will be just as easy with a bottle of water and a bag of pork rinds for the drive!

Karen