Well I really didn't want to cheat, it just happened that way !! I quit smoking 10 days ago, and I just needed to keep filling my face to keep the smokes out of my mouth. One thing led to another, and lastnight I had baked ziti for dinner... well, that was a BAD MOVE!!! I was up till 4 am in tears beacuse I was in so much pain.. the heartburn. I havn't had any since I restarted in Jan. and you know what?? I forgot how bad I feel when I get it... so here I am, a new day, a new start... back to basics atkins.. and a non smoker!!!!! I feel good

Dee

Congratulations on giving up the smokes! I know its hard, but you can do it! Sorry about the ziti heartburn. That's a good cautionary tale.

It could be a lot worse, I'm sure, so don't beat yourself up.

Another great thing about giving up smoking? Food tastes so much better once you're clean for a while. At least it did for me.

Good luck!

It's so true! I had a bad experience by cheating with Taco Bell last weekend. Sometimes you need to be bad to stay good!

Oh, this is so true. Since restarting atkins in January I have had 2 cheat meals. The first being mexican food (which I love) and the other being pizza (which I also love) and I felt so miserable afterwards both times. Heartburn, stomach issues, etc.

It surely made me realize that I didn't want to go back to my former way of eating.

So right!

After being really good for a month, last weekend I splurged on pizza--two!--my great weakness!

Monday morning I woke up with the worst carb face I've had in a while, took two days for my puffy eyes to calm down.

The third day I spent in the nearest bathroom, expelling all the water my body had retained.

By Thursday I was tracking back to normal and no desire at all to go off half-carbed!

me to but last sunday was warm and sunny and i`d done so well,had`nt had a beer since jan5th when i started,11 miller lites later,needless to say next day hungover and riddled with guilt,i put on 7 lbs of water weight and it took untill yesterday my body to purge it, i`ll not do that again. YEA RIGHT! good luck,just get right back at it,matt

hi richmond!

Hi Eastern Shore!

That's God's Country over there!

that it is!!

I am glad to see I am not the only one who did this. Well so it was Easter lol like that give me permission to cheat. But there was this awesome califlower salad and a few other things that were ok to eat, but I just ate and ate. I did not have sugar but just way to many carbs in the foods that I normally limit myself to. I am still doing induction and lets just say I was way way over my carb limit for the day. Today my plan is to try and be more active and not stay where I was yesterday. LOL

On Thursday, I planned to "cheat" because a friend of mine prepared a seder meal for us.
Let's just say there was a lotza matza.

When hubby got home from work, I looked at him, told him I was about to fall asleep standing up, and that my emotions were on a roller-coaster and I felt ready to bite someone's head off. He knew to just stay away for the rest of the night.

Very strong side-effects (the sleep-induction and the anger). Didn't like the monster it turned me into. At least I knew to warn my loved ones to STAY AWAY until Frankenstein's monster was squashed.

Sometimes we DO all learn the hard way. I absolutely LOVE popcorn. The last time I ate popcorn was months ago because we went to the movies and I just couldn't resist. I ate and ate of the extra buttery goodness vowing to myself that I would start induction levels the next day. I didn't even wait that long, I went home and was physically sick for hours. I lay on the couch with the worst stomach cramps and everything that goes with it for what seemed like forever...so much for our "date night". I will never eat popcorn like that again. If I get to my goal weight I may enjoy and handful of microwave pop but never will I allow myself to get sick from seeing a movie!

I am finding it harder to get back into induction now that I did cheat. I am staying hungry but I know that will pass if I don't give up. Just don't like knowing that it is soooooo easy to just cheat. Do you ever feel that way. I know in the past I have lost tons of weight over the years and one thing I leaned last time was not to say that I will never go back to the old way of eating. I know that it is very easy to do just that.

If there is a silver lining to cheating, it will give your metabolism a bit of a kick, so when you go back to low-carbing, it will be working a bit faster than before the cheat.
And we are all human. Food has so many emotions tied up within it, don't beat yourself up too much. At least it made you realise that's NOT the road you want to go down any more.

Take care x

We need to change the language we use - quit referring to it as a "cheat" meal, which seems to imply we've committed some secret evil. I like calling it a "SAD meal" - using Atkins "Standard American Diet" abbreviation, but also because that's how such a thing should be seen, as SAD, something to just shake our heads about before turning back to Happy Meals! (not the McDonald's kind, the thick ribeye dipped in butter kind!)