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  #46   ^
Old Sat, Apr-20-02, 16:35
Tiggerlou's Avatar
Tiggerlou Tiggerlou is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 214
 
Plan: CAD + reg. fast
Stats: 214/153.5/135 Female 5'6"
BF:34.5/18/14
Progress: 77%
Location: Great Lakes Area
Lightbulb eye opener

Only about a month into this new WOL, it amazes me as well what you have to keep learning. I, as well thought, once I read the book, I go and do it - period! WRONG! I lost so very nicely on the first two weeks of induction (8.5llbs). Then the lbs crept BACK, after only ONE no no. Back to induction - nothing! I found hidden carbs BIG TIME! My biggest weakness is coffee - black, but lots of it! Reading just the labels on the foods is so very misleading. I started FitDay, and what an eye opener!! I was consuming an extra 12carbs with coffee alone! Really having a hard time keeping it down to just a few cups a day (withdrawal symptoms), but I guess I have no choice... Anyone else dicovered hidden carbs as their mistake?
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  #47   ^
Old Sat, Sep-14-02, 15:14
committed committed is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 134
 
Plan: atkins
Stats: 325/243/150
BF:
Progress: 47%
Location: Seattle
Default mistakes

I went on a road trip early on in my LCing WOL. Afraid to eat in any restaurants, I brought along lots of hard boiled eggs, lots of water and low carb bars. I also got some pork rinds at a gas stop. I tend not to eat them because I eat the entire bag anytime I open one but I knew I needed the fat.

Three days and I was just fine. On day four, I gained three pounds. I had not had one bite of food other than eggs, protein bar (1 or 2 daily) and the pork rinds. I know the pork rinds are salty but this wasn't water weight.

I couldn't get stabilized, feeling like I was in the LC flow again, for about a week.

That taught me a lesson about the low carb bars. I am not even going to keep one or two on hand for emergencies.
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  #48   ^
Old Sat, Sep-21-02, 20:33
Dale Dale is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 29
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 250/250/150
BF:
Progress:
Location: Melbourne, Victoria
Default

This is such a great thread.

This is my third time back at Atkins. This time, I am not trying to control the WOE, I am just going with the WOL. Meaning--after rereading Atkins book for the 6th time, I finally got that I must up my protein.

Coming from down under means we don't have access to those amazing 'low carb' products you guys do. We are about to have a company release FibreX cereal, low carb and gluten free, and the ingredients are all of what I would normally eat. Good news.

First 2 times, I ate cream, cream, cream, and cream. I also had way too much macadamias (before the price went sky high) then way too much almonds. Then because I wasn't having enough protein, I found I was looking for food, the addiction would take over and poof!

Before I was having 5 meals a day because I always looking for food, this time, 3 meals a day. Less food than before, but the choice is more protein, so I am not hungry, not looking for a snack and dealing with the emotions that keep coming up.

I will add that this week has been interesting because my 3 1/2 year old grandson is in hospital with meningitis and meningocochal (sp) so I find myself looking in the fridge. I picked it up very quickly and have been allowing myself to feel instead of swallowing the emotion with food.

He is slowly on the mend, and I am thrilled that I have been able to actually deal with the emotion of being helpless!

Once a month I make up a copy of Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, once a month I make up chocolate chip cookies. I ensure I have treats, but one a week and if I find I am craving more, I will deal with it. It has been hard, on a day to day basis.

Third time is not for the weight. It is for the way of life. I don't have scales and only measure when I have to review a pattern for my job. So maybe once a month do I measure. I just notice my clothes and work hard to stop the obsession of weight/size.

In retrospect, I know i had to fail twice to 'get it'. Not a great way to learn the lesson, but there you go. Also, I learned that once I picked my plan, stick with it. 'There' is no different to 'here'.

I live on 20--25g carb a day (after two months) and about 90--100g protein a day.

Thanks for this thread. It has helped so much to see I am not alone

Dale
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  #49   ^
Old Sat, Sep-21-02, 22:45
sugarfree1's Avatar
sugarfree1 sugarfree1 is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 40
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 280/257/185
BF:
Progress: 24%
Location: Burbank, CA
Default

I'm still new at this, but I notice a few things that will trigger me to want to eat non-stop!!

CHEESE!!! This is a hard one for me. I tend to nibble and nibble and I wind up eating way too much!!!

Those Atkins and other low carb bars! Tasty, but they really do trugger sugar cravings in me. I need to really limit them.

Nuts! I sit and much away without realizing it, I can easily eat the whole bag!!!

I think I do the best and loose the fastest when I do the plan exactally like how it was meant to be done!!! (duh!)
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  #50   ^
Old Sun, Sep-22-02, 12:25
aspreier30 aspreier30 is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 36
 
Plan: dr. atkins/neanderthin
Stats: 326.5/197/160 Female 5'10"
BF:
Progress: 78%
Location: hutchinson
Default

i also had a problem with eating anything with fake sugar and cream. it totally halted my progress.... but live and learn.. im losing weight now......
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  #51   ^
Old Thu, Sep-26-02, 06:28
Misty's Avatar
Misty Misty is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 258
 
Plan: CKD
Stats: 162/?/? Female 5'6
BF:16
Progress: 0%
Location: MN
Default

MISTAKE #1=The first time I did Atkins I only counted carbs and lost a lot of weight at first and was elated. Suddenly I quit losing and couldn't figure out why. I started counting calories, thinking I was eating too many. To my surprise, I was only eating between 600-900 calories a day. No wonder, I was starving myself and I was also exercising like a maniac. I didn't feel like I was starving because suddenly I wasn't constantly hungry like I had been while on low-fat. Naturally I gained a lot of weight when I started eating the amount of calories I should be.

MISTAKE #2=After gaining 1/2 of the weight I lost back, I tried eating 5-6 smaller meals rather than 3. Well, then portion control became an issue. Each meal was the same size and not what most would consider "small".

MISTAKE #3=Comparing myself to others. I was reading about others who were the same weight as me and I started eating like they were. I'm still struggling with this somewhat. I'm working on finding what works for ME. It's tough when I read about others being able to eat something I can't have, but I'm learning to prioritize my cravings vs. my desire to lose weight.
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  #52   ^
Old Thu, Sep-26-02, 08:19
PJ in Miam's Avatar
PJ in Miam PJ in Miam is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 271
 
Plan: none right now
Stats: // Female 5'6"
BF:
Progress: 17%
Location: USA
Default

Great thread Karen.

Lessons learned the hard way:

1. Meal replacements. Low-Carb bars, and even protein shakes, are not "meals". They may be better than starving or eating carbs (well, that is questionable in the case of the bars...), but that does not make them into a real-food meal.

1b: Mock Danish is not a meal.

1c: Four mock danish is not a 'big' meal. LOL.

2. Milk. I would buy a little milk for my daughter on the way to school, and she wouldn't drink it all. Then I would have the 'clean your plate' issue and the 'yeah but I spent money on it' issue and the 'it's just a little, technically I could arrange my carbs to have just a few tablespoons of milk' issue. What really happened is that it sent my carb and sugar cravings into the stratosphere (and messed up my eating for the rest of the day, as I then couldn't have the carbs I'd planned in various meals).

2b: She can drink milk at school with lunch. If I can't have it, then at home, she can drink what I drink -- water. It not only won't kill her, it will be good for her. I have stuff she can eat that I can't, esp. fruit, fruity yogurts, and occasional treats. But in general, low-carb foods are not some bizarre specialty item like medicine, that is only for me. Eating meat dishes and salads with green veggies as her dominant foods (beyond the stuff I mentioned I keep around), and the megadose of carbs she gets in school (sigh), is not unreasonable of me nor unhealthy for her.

2c: My first responsibility food-wise is to myself. It is not unfair to expect that I will not cook and distribute high-carb stuff to others. We do not make recovering alcoholics bartenders, and it would be ludicrous to assign one to 'pick up the beer' for the family barbecue. Obesity KILLS. While others act like it is some kind of social game, for me it could be life and death. My survival is more important to me than other peoples' hurt feelings. If they are not adult enough to understand the seriousness of this issue, they can get stuffed. The people most likely to make lowcarbing difficult are the same people who tend to have the most opinions about my being obese, ironically.

2d: If somebody living with me wants to have high-carb food, I understand perfectly. I also understand that we can have our own areas of the refrigerator, and they can learn to cook. If I had my cousin TJ, the body-builder's ability to stand around food and have zero interest in anything but Tuna and Water (around his competition times), then hey, no big deal, let me make you some mashed potatoes! But if I don't, then asking others around me to be responsible for _themselves_, instead of indirectly causing me grevious harm by expecting me to babysit their eating habits differently than my own, is ridiculous. (Note: also, eating MY reserved food is a crime. Period.) I realize that women, especially those over 35, often have trouble with this with their husbands. I divorced my husband and a small part of it was because he sabotaged my attempts to get healthier by doing LC. At first it's just health, but at some point you realize it is really life and death -- not just medically, but psychologically and socially. Pretty ironic that many people quite literally have to die for the one person they love enough to die for. 'Nuff said.

3. Cheese. If cheese were a god, it would be my religion. Too much melted invokes my 'texture-snob' nausea, but otherwise, I think I could go on a mostly-cheese diet and be happy. Alas, probably the thing in milk I respond to, affects me with cheese too, at least if I'm eating it in quantity. It sparked cravings (much more mild than milk, though).

3b. I was using cheese to 'drown' a variety of things for taste, instead of learning to really enjoy a piece of chicken or steak, without dumping a boatload of cheese and sour cream or whatever on top of it. Those things are nice, and it's fine to have them in a meal if you can, but again, they're playing into the same taste-game as high-carb stuff. The beauty of low carb is that it can teach your body to be sensitive to and appreciate the sugar in a ring of raw onion, in a thin slice of tomato, and the very thought of asparagus (which I hated till LC) can be downright orgasmic when you are craving something lighter than meat. By making everything with immense amounts of cheeses and creams and so forth, one almost misses the chance to really TASTE these foods.

4. Fake anything. I am tempted to rename my 'mock' everythings to something else. As long as I think of something as 'almost-like-pizza', I sort of miss real pizza, and notice what is not quite the same. If all LC recipes are stand-alone, they are just fine, even wonderful. I'm reminded of this health bar I used to visit where I would have carob 'Hercules Flips'. Now, if you were expecting it to taste like a chocolate shake, it would frankly be sickening. But once you accepted it as a 'carob hercules flip', you realized it had its own distinct taste like nothing else, and was wonderful. My point is that psychologically, I don't want to be The Pretender when it comes to food. I don't want to spend my life "almost" having pizza and "almost" having this or that. I am thrilled there are so many awesome LC-variants on dishes we're used to. But the "almost-somethings" make me feel deprived on some level. Either it's a low-carb food when made one way and it's "the same thing", or it's a different, UNIQUE food that low-carbers came up with, and it is its OWN thing. I know this sounds like stupid semantics, but my psychology is a big thing when it comes to sticking with LC, so I take such subtle things seriously.

PJ
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  #53   ^
Old Thu, Sep-26-02, 08:24
asugar's Avatar
asugar asugar is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 1,260
 
Plan: Shoogadownsizing!
Stats: 205/145/150 Female 5'4"
BF:F/C/C
Progress: 109%
Location: Goalsville!
Default

This really is a great thread. My big newbie mistake was mustard. The brand I was using had 2 grams of carbs per teaspoon! I might just as well have rolled my hamburger around in granulated sugar. And, yes, I have switched my brand of mustard.
asugar
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  #54   ^
Old Thu, Sep-26-02, 08:40
Tiggerlou's Avatar
Tiggerlou Tiggerlou is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 214
 
Plan: CAD + reg. fast
Stats: 214/153.5/135 Female 5'6"
BF:34.5/18/14
Progress: 77%
Location: Great Lakes Area
Default

PJ,

I am utterly impressed by your words, as well as the choice thereof! Hats off to you!

My biggest mistakes are the cals, which, unfortunately I cannot have unlimited amounts of! Carbs can go as high as in the 40's so far, but the cals...oh my!
Don't be fooled! For most of us, the cals DO count just as much as the carbs!

Good luck all!!
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  #55   ^
Old Thu, Sep-26-02, 09:20
PJ in Miam's Avatar
PJ in Miam PJ in Miam is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 271
 
Plan: none right now
Stats: // Female 5'6"
BF:
Progress: 17%
Location: USA
Default

Really! Tiggerlou, what are you eating that you are going too high in calories? Good heavens, I can almost never go high ENOUGH! -- at least, not without feasting on predominantly bacon and cheese all day. :-)

PJ
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  #56   ^
Old Thu, Sep-26-02, 09:44
GatorGal93's Avatar
GatorGal93 GatorGal93 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 716
 
Plan: low salt
Stats: 207/236/160 Female 5'10"
BF:44.1%/33.86%/?
Progress: -62%
Location: Florida
Post Oldie makes newbie mistakes

Years ago when I was in my 20's, I lost weight on the LC WOL successfully but did not stick with it. After "re-attempting" Atkins and gaining this February, here are my mistakes that I finally figured out.

NUMERO UNO!
**You cannot eat as much as you did 10 years ago and lose weight!
I was eating any amount of protein I wanted and was gaining. My 30 year old body cannot handle all the food that my 20-something body could. Limiting my daily calories to 800 has helped this. (After trial and error of 1200, 1000 then 800.)

Number 2:
**Get off the meds. (Talk to your doctor.)
I was on Prozec and a bp med that hindered my weight loss and even made me gain.

Number 3:
**Continue to drink water until you go to sleep.
I stopped drinking water after 4pm because I did not have a convenient water cooler at home. I increased my water intake after 6pm and found that it curbs munchie cravings at night.

After limiting my calories to 800, stopping my meds and increasing my water, I have lost about 5 pounds in a week (I recently had hit my highest weight of 229.).

Good luck!
Julie

P.S. I know some will debate the calorie issue, but I think it is whatever works for you and my doctor agrees with this amount of calories for me.

Last edited by GatorGal93 : Thu, Sep-26-02 at 10:22.
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  #57   ^
Old Thu, Sep-26-02, 10:01
Tiggerlou's Avatar
Tiggerlou Tiggerlou is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 214
 
Plan: CAD + reg. fast
Stats: 214/153.5/135 Female 5'6"
BF:34.5/18/14
Progress: 77%
Location: Great Lakes Area
Default

Eating lots of cheeses, meats, eggs...but I can put'em away!!! 2 eggs + butter, 1 serv. meat, 1 oz. cheese and the rest veggies is already almost 600!!! Add cream in the coffee( I know, I know...) There are my 2000+ cals!!! I do believe it is my workout regiments that cause this! Upped my carbs a lot (relatively seen) and that seems to do the trick. I don't seem to be as hungry all the time. But 800 cals are NOT ENOUGH!!! Think about it - a 'normal'(?) persons burns around 2000 cals a day, 1500 cals should be the guideline. I burn about 3000-3500 cals a day because of my workouts and activity level. Sticking with 2000-2500 cals a day. A daily 500 cal deficit will cause about 1 lb of fat loss per week, and it should NOT go faster than that! Speed does not measure succes in this 'game'! Be careful, guys....
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  #58   ^
Old Thu, Sep-26-02, 10:18
slimmin slimmin is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 982
 
Plan: Atkins Induction
Stats: 157/147.5/138 Female 5 ft 6 1/2 in
BF:?/26%/24%
Progress: 50%
Location: Ottawa, Ontario
Default

I also eat about 2000 cals/day ... a 3 egg omlette with 1 oz cheese and some chopped ham for breakfast. a salad with ham or chicken and chopped bacon for lunch ... some pecans as a snack ... chicken or steak with broccoli or cauliflower and salad for dinner. Did I mention that I love to eat meat?

I workout at least 6 days a week for at least an hour a day ... according to fitday, I burn between 2600-3000 cals per day. I may not be losing as quickly as I'd like to (who is?), but I'm certainly not gaining!
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  #59   ^
Old Thu, Sep-26-02, 10:24
Karen's Avatar
Karen Karen is offline
Forum Founder
Posts: 12,775
 
Plan: Ketogenic
Stats: -/-/- Female 5 feet 4 inches
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: Vancouver
Default

Quote:
Limiting my daily calories to 800 has helped this.


Say if you were 5'4" and weighed 170 lbs., spent 12 hours a day sleeping and the other 12 sitting in meetings, your calorie requirements just for those to things would be this:

Basal:1526
Activities:381
Total: 1907

With those numbers in mind, I cannot help but reply that 800 calories is dangerous. 800 calories is near starvation. Your body knows it needs the calories and will definitely tell you. Any sustained length of time is damaging and a not sustained length of time keeps you on the diet yo-yo.

Karen
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  #60   ^
Old Fri, Oct-04-02, 10:34
brooky's Avatar
brooky brooky is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 43
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 242/211/170
BF:
Progress: 43%
Location: Florida
Default Re: Not necessarily LC mistakes, just mistakes!

Quote:
Originally posted by amieK
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!


No coffee???? I switched over to decaf and it seems to be working out fine.
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