Hi folks!

I recently read Gary Taubes "why we get fat" and I'm coming over to the low-carb camp. I've tried to do paleo in the past, and reading Gary's book and listening to some other low-carb podcasts gave me some ideas to modify it to work for me. I'm on Day 2 and feel pretty hopeful.

I desperately need to change my diet. I've experienced a lot of health problems in the last year and no doctor has figured out a reason why. I think it comes down to that I was so malnourished on the standard American diet that my body was literally starving even though I'm overweight.

So hello low-carbers! I'm definitely going to need support along this journey, and I know this is a great community.

I am just coming "back home" to low carbing as well. I am doing Atkins induction. Today was day 1 for me; although yesterday was like a pre-Atkins day.

I feel good today, and I am pretty confident in my decision to do this program. Good luck to you and we'll be running into each other around here I am sure.

flamanette

Hope you find the health you are seeking through low carb! It has changed my life for the better, controlled my diabetes and helped me lose weight and feel so much better with less hunger than any low calorie diet ever did.

Welcome and please join us here at the paleo/primal thread! We are a friendly and nonjudgemental group - here to support and encourage each other along the way. Reading Gary Taubes' book Good Calories, Bad Calories was the turning point for me too... I will never ever go back to grains, grains, and more grains! I am planning to read his new one soon.

Many of us have had (or have) some health problem or another and are seeing great success with this way of eating. We'd love to have you come chat with us, so just jump in!

So my low-carb diet lasted all of 6 days! Dude.

I woke up and was so hungry and had a major carb craving and gave in, even though I had cooked food in the fridge I could have heated up.

Guess all I can do is learn and move on, but man, does that stink. Trying not to label myself as a failure for knowing that those foods are so unhealthy but eating them anyway.

One day eating off plan isn't the end of a WOE. If I were to count only the weeks I never slipped up as successful, I would have to say that I've had no success in the past 6 years.

You are still on a low-carb diet, even if you make a few mistakes along the way (Even big mistakes, even mistakes that last more than a single day).


If that's the definition of failure, I've "failed off" almost 90 lbs.

All of my life (since my first diet in kindergarten), I considered eating off plan as failure. Every weight loss attempt I abaqndoned (every one but this one) I gave up not because I was failing, but because I felt like I was failing. Either because I wasn't losing fast enough, or because I was eating off plan too often. Even if I was losing weight rapidly, if I was making a lot of mistakes, I'd feel discouraged and hopeless even though the scale was telling me I was doing well.

Losing weight wasn't enough encouragement for me, I had to feel I was being perfect as well. A plan I couldn't stick to 100% was a plan I would eventually abandon, even if I was losing steadily.

I have a lot of reasons for eating much lower-carb than I currently am able to. I've been able to keep my autoimmune disease symptoms mostly under control with a moderately low-carb diet. I could (because I have) reduce symptoms even further just by eating fewr carbs than I do. And I do keep trying to eat better and better (and I'm succeeding, progress has just been slow).

Slow progress is still progress. Don't forget that. Just because you're not where you want to be, doesn't mean you're a failure. I have to remember that if I were climbing a mountain and slipped and backslid, I wouldn't throw myself to the bottom. I'd pick myself up and keep going.

For a lot of reasons, I'm not a very good mountain climber any more
I've "fallen" far more than in any past attempt. When I was younger I had a lot more stamina and willpower. And yet I've made more progress than ever before (my previous weight loss record was 70 lbs, and that was with a teenagers metabolism and amphetemine diet pills).

To make progress, you don't have to be perfect, just better.

Kaplods - I just wanted to THANK YOU for that post ... which actually almost made me cry! I so much needed to read that today. All I keep thinking is - she's lost 88 pounds - and she MESSES UP? Wow, wow, wow! I love your mountain anaology. I find my self being very self-sabotaging for not being perfect. I throw in the towel because I feel so rotten about my weight and do that vicious cycle thing where I think - why bother anyway? Hows a half pound loss on this body even worth it? But YOU - you are succeeding in such a real and fabulous way. I truly appreciate your inspiration. Thank you for posting

Hey, I had an epiphany while reading this.

If you are a failure for slipping on your diet once in awhile (which I do, and so does everybody else), then we are all successes for every meal/snack that is on plan. You can't be a failure for one day or meal off plan unless you are a success for one day or meal on plan! EPIPHANY!

I completely agree! Wow, I just had your very same epiphany (with your help), so does that count?

Now I'm almost crying. I still don't feel successful, especially in "a real and fabulous way."

Don't get me wrong. I've stopped seeing slow progress as failure, but it's still hard for me to comprehend that it's success. Especially since I know that if I had a silent observer, most wouldn't see the success, they'd see all the mistakes. I have become better at not obsessing on the mistakes though.

In some ways, I truly do feel like I've "failed off" 88 lbs, and it's made me want to shout "you don't have to be successful to succeed," because I do think that we tend to view diet "success" as a perfectly on-plan day.

When I said I didn't have perfectly on-plan weeks, I realize that I was exagerating my own success (ashamed of admitting the truth). The truth is it would be easier to count my perfectly on-plan days than my imperfect days. My imperfect days outnumber my perfect days, oh probably 10 to 1.

It surprises me as much as anyone that I could lose weight on such a messed up, imperfect, sometimed downright shoddy plan. And yet, here I am. 88 lbs thinner. Thinner than I've been in nearly 20 years. And with a fraction of the effort (This time I decided only to make changes I was willing to commit to forever, even if they resulted in no weight loss at all).

Because I've made such small, gradual changes, it almost seems like I've done nothing. In that respect, it feels like the weight has effortlessly poured off (well, dripped off).

But it's ok, I've really come to appreciate "dripping off" the pounds.

You might want to take a look at your carbs in the evening, especially hidden carbs, because when you have a few too many it can set off your insulin (the hunger hormone). I am on the Carbohydrate Addicts Diet and they say that it isn't our fault at all, it is just the way our bodies react to carbs. When you get the balance right you shouldn't wake up hungry and shouldn't have those cravings. But if your body is sending those signals it would take a superhuman hero to resist!

What you are saying is truly inspirational, and something I think we all need to learn. Too much time thinking in terms of success and failure, rather than changes we can live with. That is the answer to the yo-yo for sure!

I also really applaud you for sticking with it, the last diet I went on was very dramatic and I lost 60 lbs., and gained back almost 80. I loved it for the fast weight loss, but since so much of it was shakes and meal replacements I learned nothing about living in the real world of food. You have done that beautifully, and have the healthy kind of weight loss that will be permanent. Bravo!

I'm starting again after a carb-fest. But something feels a lot different this time. I think I finally get it that I'm supposed to eat, like, a lot of food. It's healthy food, it's real food, and I need to feed my body with it. When I was eating sugary, carb-y foods, I didn't get to eat a lot of food. Got it. Trying it. Moving on.

So I've had two days of success. Kind of feels nice to look at it that way.

Good for you getting back on track! When you are working the plan right you will feel so much better

No matter how much weight you have to lose...25 or 100 pounds we all feel the same way. We beat ourselves up when its too slow or not enough. Someitmes, I would compare with others and their successes and it took me a while to figure out that "that is not ME". I am trying to stay in tune or how my body reacts to certain foods and its affects on me and when its finally a plan for me then I feel great! Slow, fast, it doesn't matter...the end result is a lower number. It really helps to hear encouragement from all of you to keep me from beating myself up. THANKS A MIL!