Now that I’ve reached my goal weight, I have to maintain it. This is one of the most obvious things about weight loss, but it is the most misunderstood. If you’ve hung around diet boards very long, you’ll see that the biggest reason people decide to end their reducing diet is because they want to eat like a “normal” person. In many cases, low-carb diets in particular, it’s because they miss all their favorite foods. In other words, they want to go back to what they were eating before.
The elephant standing in the middle of the room, being studiously ignored, is that “normal people”, at least in the US and the UK, are fat. What the now-reduced person ate before is what made them fat in the first place.
What is particularly hard to grasp (and especially slippery if you lost the weight quickly) is the fact that 30, 40 or 50 pounds down, you are now a smaller person with lower caloric requirements. While I don’t really believe that all calories are created equal, neither do I believe that calories don’t matter. The more restricted the diet, the more anxious people are for the day when they can have fried chicken, pizza, ice cream or whatever their go-to comfort food may be. For me, that would be bacon. While I love ice cream, I love bacon even more, but then I’m not much into sugar.
This is a particular problem for people who’ve been on a low-carb diet instead of adopting a low-carb lifestyle. In their mind, there’s a point at which the diet is over. It’s no accident that Atkins dieters often fail at maintenance. Most people get through Induction and few more weeks of the second phase, drop 15-20 lbs, and then start sliding down the slippery slope of carb creep. Pretty soon, they give up and blame low-carb diet for failing them when the truth is that they *still* can’t handle the blood sugar issues that drove them to the diet in the first place.
So, back to me. I now need to eat less. Less of what is still a bit of a mystery, but after my blood glucose meter experiments, I know why I don’t get sugar cravings – my insulin response is perfectly fine. I handle fruit with no trouble – two hours after eating a banana, my blood sugar was 90. Two hours after eating yogurt with grain-free granola with a bit of raisins in it for sweetening, it was 83. And supposedly, raisins and bananas are sugar bombs for your pancreas. Tonight, I’ll find out what happens if I drink red wine, my first alcohol since December 31.
I have been very hungry (duh, I’ve been starving myself), so I tried using protein to fill the void, but that makes me put on weight. In the past, I’ve cut carbs and made up the space with fat (typical Atkins strategy), but that won’t work any more either. I’ve also tried an Optimal Diet approach, but that failed spectacularly. I gained 1 lb. plus over night both times I tried that, and the lack of protein made me hungry. Most people report that the stunning quantity of fat on that diet makes their appetite diminish immediately. Not so for me.
Since none of that worked, I’ve settled on a new plan. Back when I reviewed Dr. Steven Gundry’s Diet Evolution, I said I could remain on his Phase 1 plan indefinitely, so I’ve decided to try it. While his end-game is not somewhere I want to be, his stages for getting there incorporate a lot of things I’ve read about but haven’t been willing to try before.
I’ll lay out the boundaries of my experiment in my next blog entry as I think this one is getting a bit too long.
Well, I never bothered with the HCG thing as it seemed a little drastic. Checked “The Paleo Diet” out of the library awhile back and after two weeks on it have lost almost 9lb. More convinced than ever that dairy and grains along with dairy- and grain-based foods, and sugar, of course, were my nemeses. That includes a coupla cheat days, which are OK but not encouraged.
It’s also super-easy to follow. If it came from a cow’s udder, or a grain, or it didn’t come out of the ground/tree/vine/varmint that way, don’t eat it. Sure there’s more to it but if you only do that, you’ll be better off.
But I sure miss good cheese… oh well, I’m more tired of being fat than I miss cheese, and I’m aware that this is a “lifestyle” rather than a diet. I think I can deal, but again it’s only been two weeks.
Oh let us know about the blood sugar reading after the wine. I’m a bit… partial to the grape.
I’m familiar with Cordain’s book. I also have Ray Audette’s Neanderthin as well as the Paleolithic Prescription. I’ll write more in my next entry about what I’m doing, but except for the dairy, it’s basically paleo.
Because of the gluten intolerance thing, I don’t eat much grain anyway, so that’s not a big deal for me. I eat almost no legumes either. Once in a while I eat mexican food, and I usually eat corn and beans, but that’s so infrequent that it’s kind of a cheat meal. I haven’t eaten soy since last June, and I’m in to mood to add that back to my diet.
I’m definitely changing the way I eat dairy. I’ll have more about that in my next entry.
I took a blood glucose reading 1 hour after I finished my glass of wine – it was 73. I could hardly believe it, but I’m happy to see it!