Hello everyone,

Hope you're doing well.

Any Canadian in here doing IP with alternative products? If so, care to share what you're using nowadays, where you buy the product form, which product do you like, etc?

Here I am again -sorry to say that I have managed to regain all but 6 of the 82 lbs I lost on IP between July 2014 and June 2015.

I have eaten my emotions since my husband's passing in April - and I have eaten them with a great deal of fast food and high sugar junk. So stupid.

I have bought the right foods to follow IP using leftover IP packets and various alternatives from Quest and Proti Diet, but the idea of preparing salads and cooking for just myself has been absurdly hateful. I stand in the kitchen and do NOT want to chop veggies and cook my real food evening meal. I have trouble believing that its worth the effort to cook for one.

Instead I am willing to make a run to McDonald's, and no matter what remotely high fat high carb little protein item I would get, I'd also get one, sometimes 2 McFlurries..... ridiculous. And stop by the grocery for cookies and popcorn on the way home.

Last week I decided enough is enough. I have hardly any clothing to wear as I got rid of my big clothes, especially the fall and winter items. I hate seeing myself in the mirror. So I decided to tackle the aversion to cooking head-on.

I went online and found I could use Diet to Go's Carb30 plan -- it is net 30 carbs per day. Does not include fruit but does have a little cheese in some of the recipes. I pick up food on Tuesday and Friday and it's all freshly prepared and ready to go into the microwave. The food tastes good, requires virtually no prep just a quick heat up.

This I can handle. I am 5 days into it and down 5 lbs. After the way off program eating I have been doing, my body is in shock over the change to veggies and protein, and dropping water weight pretty quickly. I feel like I can use this approach as a kickstart and to ease back into the straight and narrow.

Next week I am getting just 2 meals a day from DTG - I will make myself fill in with salad - even if it means going to the grocery salad bar. Bags of ready to go greens will be fine, for that 3rd meal along with a packet or a piece of steak or chicken or some eggs.

This is not closely aligned with the IP program right now, but it is high protein low carb, and I am headed in the right direction.

I miss the support from these boards - I hope I can check in here despite my deviation from P1 protocol.

I also want to share with you the best resource for working on the mind game - it is all about the mind and not the food - that little voice can be so self-sabotaging. And over the long haul, once at goal, the maintenance phase can be the most challenging of all. I found a website called www.primalprotein.com, and the owner of the site is a real coach named Elizabeth Benton. She spent years doing the yo you thing and finally figured out an approach that enabled her to lose 135 lbs, and that helps change your relationship with food and beat the mind game. She has free podcasts about 3 times a week and they are terrific, and her blog is very good too. I highly recommend her - she has a facebook page and info on her site that tells her story. The nutrition info seems very well backed up by science, and her perspective on the mind game is fantastic. Those who remember me from the past know that I don't push new stuff unless it is really resounding for me and seems valuable for others. Check it out!

Oneuh2 so sorry to hear of your husbands passing. It's perfectly understandable to me that you would eat away your pain. I've been happily married to my soulmate for 40 years and I feel sure I would do the same in your position. I'm happy that you've found a way to work your way back to healthy eating. I'm not much of a poster more of a lurker on these boards but I had to comment when I read your story. Kudos to you and keep us posted!

Do you mind me asking about your mommy makeover?
 

I so could have written your post. We are in the same boat, but I haven't had my surgery yet. I am scheduled for December. Just wondering if you're happy with the results? I vacillate between really wanting the surgery and not.
I've gotten lax about my eating too. Trying to reboot today to get back to the 130's for my surgery but am struggling.
Thanks for any advise you can offer.

Thanks so much for the kind remarks, CakeLady - losing a spouse is way more difficult than I ever expected. There is this big void, and even tho he was 20 years my senior and we always expected he would pass on before I did, I never really thought about the day by day experience of being alone. It has been tough, and somehow I have not felt that I deserved the same loving care that I had given my husband over the past decade. It has taken me all these months since April to make enough commitment to myself to do good things for myself.

I really found the PrimalPotential podcasts to be SO helpful in finding a way to be my own warrior, and to not only promise myself to do what makes me feel good about myself, but to actually keep my promises to myself. For anyone who is tending to slide back down the weight gain slope, Elizabeth Benton's messages and advice are terrific.

My Carb30 Diet to Go is working well - I had some ketostix and checked today - very purple so I know ketosis is underway. And I am down 6.2 lbs after 5 days of the food plan. Next week I use IP and IP alternates with salad to fill in one meal a day (breakfast or lunch). I am so encouraged!

Hi Oneuh. So sorry to hear about your husband's passing. I can understand your situation.

In June, my darling sister passed away from her year and a half battle with cancer. Although she did not live in my state, I visited her every few weeks to take care of her and was her primary caregiver for the last month of her life. But before that, throughout our lives, we spoke on the phone nearly every day. Both of us were divorced, and we were really "life partners." We have 5 children between us, and they (the cousins) are all very close. I spent 3 weeks after her death with her kids as we packed things up.

I guess what I really mean to say is that I understand emotional eating at those difficult-life-event times. I knew exactly what I was doing and even said "I'm trying the fill the hole" (which cannot be filled by food). But I knew I needed to do that.

I gained over half the weight back (45 pounds) during May-August - even though my sister told me that she didn't want me to. I understood what I was doing and it actually felt good and comforting while I was doing it. But I knew that once I got back home and back into my routine and teaching I would get the weight back off.

I started IP again - with alternatives - the week that I went back to work. That was about a 5 weeks ago. I'm down 15 pounds and going strong.

I, too, got rid of my large sized clothes and had to buy more, just so I'd have something to wear! Those clothes are finally getting loose, but I still don't have much to wear.

I'm sticking to this until I'll back down to where I want to be.

Do whatever plan works for you. I support you taking back control. And I send you blessings of comfort. Nothing more to say. Stay strong, dear one!

Oh Joysh!!! I am terribly sorry about your sister's passing - I am sure your feeling of loss is just as strong as mine, if not more so. I am glad you were able to spend time with her before she died. Having my husband at home and being with him at the end meant so much to me.

I am so glad you are back on a good track after the height of emotional chaos- I tried to get OP and then fell off the wagon, several times this summer, but now I feel like I am pretty steady and heading in the right direction.

I am also noticing how much better my joints feel now that I am off sugar for a week. 7 days and I am down almost 7 lbs. I am breathing sighs of relief to be heading downward on the scale again, instead of watching the numbers get bigger and bigger.

Glad to find you here and I hope to be posting pretty regularly. Something about coming here to share and to contribute to the IP conversation is very beneficial to my program.

Hey there! It's been a few years. I suffer from the ease of this plan.

What I mean, is I've found it easy to go on the plan every few years and drop 20-30 then I eat "normally" (meaning non restrictive and gradually gain) and then get to a point where I just reset again. Other than getting a little chubby towards the end of my "cycle" it works pretty well to be extreme fro 7-8 weeks (phasing off properly) but not to worry too much in between.

I'm curious this time to see if my plan is flawed now that I'm 50 - wondering if the weight will be harder to knock off.

Anyways, back at it for the next few months :)

So happy that you commented on my post I have been lurking for two weeks now and haven't mustered up the nerve to start posting again. Since that post I lost what I had gained and then recently derailed again. A serious case of head in the sand until I saw a pic of myself and my weight gain was so visible i couldn't deny it anymore. So I started back 2 weeks ago 100% OP.
The results from the surgery was everything I had hoped for. Do your research be prepared and give yourself time to heal. If you have any specific questions about the surgery you can pm me

I kid you not - the primalpotential.com podcasts, daily motivations, and blog posts would really help you fight the mind game and hang in with your reboot and build good habits to deal with maintaining (which we know is SO much harder than losing).

I have yo-yo'd up and down all my life and after losing 82lbs on IP, I put all but 6 lbs back on. SO depressing to have done it and then thrown it away. I was so sure this time would be different. I let emotional upset derail me completely - that little voice in my head just gave me every excuse you can imagine.

Let's face it - we know what to eat to achieve results, and what to stay away from. But we talk ourselves into going off the program. We convince ourselves its ok, that we deserve a treat, or 'just this once'.... While we lose the excess pounds we need to build the habits that will help us keep them off for the rest of our lives. And those habits are not about the food - they are about the gremlins in our heads.

Okay, I was so gung-ho for the first two weeks, and then it happened... cereal in my house.

Things have been tough at home lately I fully admit that I am an emotional eater - and then the presence of cereal just sent me over the edge.

So I'm off plan for a week now and ashamed and can't seem to find the will to get back on plan.

ZERO SHAME, saralee ZERO SHAME! Coming here and coming clean shows you still care and still want to DO IT! What if you had waited a month, until next year, a full year to come here and come clean?!?! Two weeks is a nice solid chunk of "time in", and now you can get right back in.

This this will sound like a very "cornball" suggestion, but do you use/like the IP crispy cereal? I find that if the water is REEEAAAALY COLD, like, let it sit in the freezer a few minutes, it was a go to for me. Also, I know you have kids, but not sure of their ages - is keeping the cereal somewhere an option? They might think its fun?! I literally had to have my husband keep potato chips in the garage.

So, these suggestions don't help with the root - the emotional eating - but, I hope you won't quit! Hang in there!

Back on
 

I'm back on - thank you for the encouragement doled out here. I'm sorry I can't name you - darn mobile platform isn't that friendly.

I was at a really low spot when I posted about feeling ashamed. BUT I got back on after a week of kicking myself and now I'm back to my pre-cheat weight.

Thank goodness 3fatchicks keeps going. There's no way I could have reached out on Facebook. It seems like 90% of the posts about personal experiences are "look how great I've done!!" - Great for them but it's nice to know that we can fall dramatically and still pick ourselves up.

I suffer from dysthymic depression (low grade depression my whole life), so when I disappoint myself, I really kick myself in the gut.

Anyway, thank you!

saralee101, Good on ya!! Some of us are still around here, keep posting, we will keep reading and responding when we can! I find the FB threads difficult to follow too. If you aren't on them every day and reading everything, you miss out on a lot of comments. Much easier to find things here.
:mag:
Liana

Absolutely hang in, Saralee101!
I have no formal diagnosis of depression but longterm lowgrade sounds a lot like my life, too. I am dealing with a big regain, so that just feeds depression and feelings of guilt.
But the thing is, you CAN find some consistent behavior to follow the protocol and it WILL work for you, and in a few weeks you might be feeling like bragging a bit too.
We all enjoy celebrating wins, and we are all ready to lend a hand when there is a stumble or fall.
Hang in - and keep checking in so we know how you are doing!