Quote:
Originally Posted by nina125
Personally, I found low carbing to be unsustainable. Dont get me wrong, I do lose weight almost instantly when I go on a low carb diet, but gain everything back when I start eating normally. Maybe I am doing something wrong, but a low carb diet just doent work for me in the long run.
I thought this too - for decades. I never gave low-carb a long term attempt, because of it. I never tried it for more than a month, and if I found any aspect of a low-carb plan unreasonable, instead of tweaking the plan I abandoned the concept entirely.
I was extremely skeptical when my doctor suggested that my insulin resistance probably would respond well to a low-carb diet. It took a second opinion from a doctor who'd lost nearly 100 lbs herself on a modified Atkins, for me to seriously consider low-carb.
I still see low-carb as difficult to sustain (not impossible, just very difficult), but I've also learned that there are trade-offs to every WOE and sustainability isn't always about finding a program you can stick with - it's learning to stick with the program that works for you (and if several work, which works best with the least trade-offs).
For me, that's low-carb. I don't follow it very well, which is why I'm losing so slowly, but I really only lose when I am significantly restricting carbs. I lose more on 1800 calories of low-carb than on 1200 to 1500 calories of high carb, and I'm far less hungry. Heck I'm less hungry on 1200 calories of low-carb as on 1800 calories of high carb.
For me low-carb should be a no-brainer. Getting to eat more and lose more and drastically reduce hunger and appetite so I'm no longer rabidly hungry 24/7... what should be so unsustainable about that?
For me I realized it boiled down to a whiny inner voice that said, "But I don't want to give up bread or pasta, or lots and lots of fruit."
Bread and pastas were my biggest obstacle, and then I discovered that I'm sensitive to wheat. It may not be an actual allergy or gluten sensitivity, but if I eat more than trace amounts of wheat, my autoimmune disease symptoms flare.
Non-wheat breads are expensive and not very tasty, so I learned to give up bread, but there are plenty of very yummy non-wheat pastas, and I love fruit so much I could (and have) stalled my weight loss eating more than 1000 calories just in fruit in a day.
Pasta and fruit are my kryptonite, and I do go off plan more than I should because of them, but low-carb still has to be my plan (even if I fall off a lot) for me to lose weight consistently. When I try cutting calories without restricting carbs, I become so rabidly hungry that I end up either eating more than I should or being miserable. I don't "do" misery very well, so I end up giving up.
I'm not saying my experience with low-carb is true for every dieter - far from it. But I've learned that it's true for many of us. I never realized just how many people shared my experience with high-carb eating until I really started researching low-carb and participating in the low-carb forums.
I don't have the option of seeing low-carb as unsustainable (well yes I do, but that option entails seeing weight loss as unsustainable), because it's the only plan that I've been able to not only lose, but keep weight off for more than a few months to a year. I've been on a downward trend (for both carbs and weight loss) for six years, and the fewer carbs I eat, the better I lose.
Who knows, to maintain my weight I may need to eat virtually no sugar and starch. Or maybe I will be able to eat more carbs as I lose weight and become more active. Either way, I have to make sustainability about results, not my own preferences. I may always prefer to eat bread, pasta, and tons of fruit, but that may never be an option, if I want to reach a healthy weight.