For most of my life, I believed all of these points, which is why I never gave carb-restricted diets a chance. Turns out it's the only way I've been able to acheive sustainable weight loss.
When my current doctor recommended low-carb dieting a few years ago, I was shocked. He'd said that some relatively new research suggests that people with IR and other blood sugar issues lost weight better on low-carb, but he warned that I shouldn't go "too low" (though admitted he didn't know how low was too low). It took a second opinion from a doctor (who with her husband) each lost about 100 lbs on a modified Atkins.
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Originally Posted by BoopRN
1. Dont work
Hm, I guess my husband and I have imagined our weight loss. That's too bad. I'll have to break the news to all the friends and family who've complimented my husband and I on our weight loss. Apparently they're harboring the same delusion.
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Originally Posted by BoopRN
2.Make you feel sad and stressed!
I guess I'm also imagining the stress relief I'm experiencing. Here I thought it was high-carb diets that left me sad and stressed because they left me starving no matter how much I ate.
I must also be imagining the symptom relief I get from my arthritis, fibromyalgia, autoimmune respiratory illness, rosacea, and seborrheic dermatitis and other skin issues. I guess my husband is imagining it too (he also must be psychic too, as there's no other explanation for the fact that he can tell by my mood and complexion if I've eaten wheat or have had a very high carb day).
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Originally Posted by BoopRN
3.Make you fatter, not thinner!
I've been on thousands of diets, and I am convinced that most did more to make me fatter than thinner, but of the thousands of diets I've been on, fewer than 10 (probably more like 5) have been low-carb.
I agree that low-carb plans that are outrageously low in carbs (allowing no vegetables - though there are very few low-carb diets that do this) isn't sustainable (and those were the handful of plans I quit).
My current plan is moderately low-carb, and I've never kept up so long a losing "streak" nor have ever lost this much weight (my record before this was 70 lbs as a teenager While I was on prescription amphetamine diet pills).
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Originally Posted by BoopRN
4.A[r]e not sustainable!
Again I must be imagining things, because this is the only food plan that I've ever been able to stick with for more than two years. Sure I make mistakes, and if you mean "must be perfectly on plan without a single, solitary mistake" I'd point out that makes every single "diet" unsustainable.
When I assumed I needed high carb treats like cakes and cookies, at least occasionally, then low-carb was very unsustainable. But now I find that I'm allergic to wheat (to the point that if I eat more than a few bites of a wheat product, I get a rash my husband refers to as "face rot."). So I can't eat breads, cakes, and cookes anyway (unless I want to pay ten times as much for products that don't even taste 1/10th as good).
I think a diet is only unsustainable when you believe it is unsustainable (in other a words, you really have never had any intention of sticking with the plan forever)
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Originally Posted by BoopRN
5.Bloat your belly!
WTF? Really? I've never heard of anyone on low-carb experiencing this. Just the opposite. On very low-carb diets, people tend to retain the least amount of water. To the point that the only luck I've ever had with minimizing pms/tom water gain and bloating is to eat super low-carb. So low-carb to the point that I know I'm going to see a tiny gain when I return to eating my normal moderately-low carb. The more carbs you eat, the more water your body needs to digest them. That doesn't mean you have to or should reduce carbs to zero, but I've never heard of anyone "bloating" from carb restriction. From excess carbs, yes, but not from low-carb.
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Originally Posted by BoopRN
6.Make you feel deprived!
No, what makes me feel deprived is eating high-carb foods. For me carbs literally have an addiction-like property. Much like alcoholics who say "one drink is too many, and a thousand isn't enough."
I do make mistakes. I think, "Ooh that chocolate looks so good, I'll just have a little bite. I deserve to have a treat, I've been on plan so long," and after that tiny bite, I suddenly feel mentally, emotionally, and physically deprived. MY IQ drops and I feel like the cookie (carb) monster, "ME WANT COOKIE... ME WANT CANDY, ME WANT POUNDS OF MASHED POTATOES, GIMME starch, GIMME SUGAR..."
When I eat high-carb long enough, nothing tastes sweet enough. FRUIT isn't sweet enough, - vegetables like peas and beets don't taste sweet at all. Tasting sweet is like tasting salt. The more you eat, the more habituated you get. It takes more and more to reach the same flavor level. Likewise, the less you eat, the more sensitive you become to the flavor.
Processed foods tend to be high in fat, salt, and sugar, all of which are desensitizing to the taste buds (the more you have, the more you want and need, the less you taste them). The combination is also addictive. Eating processed foods desensitizes your tastebuds to the point that healthy food tastes bland and flavorless, sour and bitter - Vegetables taste like dirt, fruit tastes sour, lean meats taste like cardboard.
When you don't eat processed foods, natural foods that you remember as "bland" suddenly have a more intense and interesting flavor. You notice subtle flavor distinctions you couldn't taste before, because sugar, fat, and salt were overpowering your tastebuds.
I think this is exactly like #4. If you expect to feel deprived you will feel deprived. If you dwell on what you can't, shouldn't, or don't have, you will feel deprived. Feeling deprived is a choice. You can cry, whine, complain, and mourn what you don't have in your life, you can feel deprived. You can even feel deprived if you mourn things that hurt you. Wheat hurts me. It gives me a nasty rash that if left untreated or if more wheat is consumed, my face will become red (fuschia to ruby), swollen, and horribly, intensely itchy/painful. The skin will ooze yellowish clear liquid that cursts over (imagine poison ivy on top of sunburn. The pain/itch is so maddening it takes all my strength when I'm awake not to claw a tit, and I'll wake up with blood on my pillow because I did claw at it in my sleep.
Now do I feel deprived because I can't have a piece of normal cake once in a while?
Sadly yes. But I get over it quickly when I realize that the absence of "face rot," is well worth giving up chocolate cake (Yes, I know you can find wheat-free chocolate cake, but giving it up is easier than finding a good one).
Carbs in general are much the same. I can choose to eat high-carb any time I want to, but I have to suffer the consequences - more hunger, health issue symptoms if I overindulge - and the risk of my inner carb-addicted idiot raising her (literally) ugly head with a raging desire for MORE, MORE, MORE.
