When I decided to go low-carb, I knew that the hardest thing would be the weekends.  When I’m in my work routine, it’s far easier for me to eat healthy.  I needed to come up with a game plan to conquer the weekends.  I decided that I would go slightly higher carb during the weekends, consuming 30-50g a day instead of the usual 20g I did during the week.  I’d make the more higher-carb dishes I liked, such as chicken noodle soup (with Dreamfields pasta), burgers and rutabaga fries, stuff like that.  I also made sure to have some low-carb candies or other low-carb desserts around to prevent me from going to the store for that pint of Chubby Hubby.  I found that this approach helped me because it helped me feel that I was still ‘celebrating’ over the weekend like I used to do, but still lose weight.

 However, as my title suggests, I was not so good this past weekend.  My boyfriend and I went over to his mom’s house for the weekend to go to a winter festival and do some laundry.  Saturday night they wanted to go to this new BBQ place nearby, where of course the only low-carb side they had was canned green beans, which I simply cannot stomach.  So I figured might as well get the sweet potato fries, more nutritious than the regular fries at least.  Fortunately, I had brought some low-carb candy up with me so I avoided dessert at least.  Or so I thought, because Sunday my boyfriend’s mom decided to make home-made brownies so we could have brownie sundaes.  I simply cannot resist a home-made brownie!  And then when my boyfriend and I wanted to get dinner late last night, I got a burger and fries because at that point I knew it was a day for indulgences (and the bar down the street from us makes the BEST fries).

 Now, before you tell me I committed a low-carb sin, hear me out.  I knew going into this lifestyle that I would never be able to give up sugar or starches forever.  I mean, I enjoy them, I won’t lie to myself!  But now, I know that it is ok to consume them in moderation, as long as I go right back to low-carb the next day.  And I look forward to it because low-carb makes my body feel good!  I never thought I’d be looking forward to eating healthy!

 When I look back on how I used to beat myself up if I ate something ‘bad’, it makes me very sad.  We are only human, after all, and we are going to crave things that aren’t good for us.  And NEVER allowing ourselves to have those things will just make us more miserable.  The hard part is moderating yourself to just one day or in my case, one weekend.  For some people, just a taste of sugar leaves them craving more.  For me, I now know that I can control my cravings beyond that one occurrence.  If you are the type where just one taste causes you to binge for days, ask yourself why and what you can do to avoid it.  Come up with your own game plan, because it’s unreasonable to think that you will NEVER have french fries or brownies made with real sugar again.  I mean it is just no fun, and if you are really going to make this a lifestyle change, you have to learn to cope when you do give into temptation.

 So now the real question is: how will this impact my weight loss?  Check back Thursday, February 4^th for my weekly progress report!

Why do we believe that saturated fat is the enemy?  If you have ever seen the documentary Fathead by Tom Naughton (which everyone should, even if you don’t do low-carb), you can skip this paragraph, because I’m basically re-iterating what he said in his movie.  George McGovern was a US Senator and also the chairperson of the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs in the 1970’s.  In 1977, McGovern decided that the committee needed to provide guidelines for all of America to eat, and released the “McGovern Report”, which instructed people to reduce their intake of red meat, eggs, and other cholesterol-heavy foods, and to increase intake of fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and whole grains in order to prevent heart disease.  Now who do you think wrote this report- a scientist? No.   Researcher? No.  It was written by a junior member of McGovern’s staff, and a vegetarian to boot!  Scientists at the time urged them to not release this report to the public, because there was not enough conclusive evidence to support that a low-fat diet was more beneficial.  In fact, the American Medical Association at first protested this report, saying that people should consult with their doctors for individual guidance instead of following the blanket advice in this report.  The committee refused to listen to any scientists who disagreed with their findings, basically telling researchers to produce studies that agree with their views or they would not receive funding for their work.  They released the report, and soon the whole country was afraid of fat.

It’s a shame that people don’t realize how easily research can be skewed to produce specific results.  It’s also a shame that scientists who are truly dedicated to finding the real cause of heart problems, disease, and obesity in this country might be disregarded just because their findings do not fit what the government has told us since 1977.  There is tons of research out there that proves low-carb diets help prevent diabetes, obesity, and heart disease!  Yes,  it PREVENTS heart disease, not causing it.

And this is why most of my generation fears fat, because we grew up our entire lives with this low-fat BS being all we knew about nutrition.

I think a big reason low-carb is still thought of as taboo is that a lot of people  are afraid to go without what have now become staples of the typical American meal: potatoes, pasta, bread, and of course- that nice sugary dessert at the end.  I know many who claim they could never give up carbs.  I even admit it was a scary thought!  But then I realized that from the time humans walked the earth up until recently, people ate red meat and butter and saturated fat all the time.  Now, let’s think here: have the rates of heart disease, obesity, and diabetes decreased since the McGovern Report? Heck no- we are looking at higher rates than ever.

There is also the argument of “fat has more calories per gram, so if I eat less fat I eat less calories and lose weight”.  Technically, part of this is true.  Fat has 9 calories per gram compared to carbs which only have 4.  However, fat will keep you satisfied longer than carbs will.  Consider two common snacks for low-fat and low-carb dieters: a pack of Nabisco 100 calorie Oreo crisps and a Sargento Sharp Cheddar Cheese stick (90 calories).  Fat makes up 67% of the calories in the cheese stick (the rest from protein).  76% of the calories in the Oreo crisps are from carbs (the rest from fat).  Now, it’s 3 PM and you are ravenous.  For most of us, if we eat the Oreo crisps, we’ll be hungry again in an hour, and you’d probably wind up eating another snack before dinner.  If we were to eat that cheese stick,  we’d be satisfied until dinner.  So in the end, you’d probably end up eating MORE calories if you had chosen the carb-dense snack.   This explains the basic idea behind the low-carb diet.

Hopefully someday we can have a indisputable proof regarding the lifetime benefits of a low-carb lifestyle.  In the meantime, we mustn’t give up spreading the word (Jimmy Moore, THAT was my favorite chapter in the Atkins book! )  I know that this is the right diet for me, and my hope is that my blog can convince others, especially millennials, to try it and see it is right for them too!

                 “Instead of telling yourself you should exercise, tell yourself you want to exercise, and then you won’t view it as a chore”

Oh, Ok, great!  So your advice is to lie to myself? That’s a healthy attitude.  Advice like this bothers the crap out of me.  Like I’m supposed to magically love exercise just by telling myself that I want to?  I know there are some people out there who actually do like exercising, but I’m not one of them.  I’m hoping to change my mind on that, but simply telling myself to do so won’t work.

Why do a lot of us need motivation to exercise?  There’s a reason the diet industry currently makes about 55 billion a year- people, such as myself, are lazy.  The majority of dieters would rather lose weight through changing what they eat or taking a pill rather than moving their butts.  I can totally understand this- it’s much easier and far less time-consuming to change what you put in your mouth rather than spend 30 minutes to an hour doing some form of exercise. I also notice that every so often, an article claiming that you don’t need to exercise to lose weight will pop up in a women’s magazine. (Personally, I feel this is just an idea women’s magazines recycle in order to get “new” material and grab a potential reader’s attention, but that’s another post.)

So is exercise necessary for weight loss?  Personally, I’m not a doctor or scientist so I couldn’t say for sure.  I have seen in my own progress that I can still lose weight even if I don’t exercise (about 1-2 pounds a week).  But I do know is that moving your body is part of achieving a healthy attitude and lifestyle.  Exercising in any form helps strengthen our muscles, keeps us flexible, and gives us endorphins that reduce stress and make us happy.  It helps keep our bodies working properly and builds up our immune system.  Unfortunately, in the past I have been a “yo-yo exerciser”, where I’ll exercise for a couple months but then life gets in the way and I lose the habit.  During those times when I was moving my body, I did feel lighter, had more energy, and felt better emotionally.  My body felt Ok without exercise, but functioned a lot better when I did.

I think the biggest challenge today is that most of us view exercise mostly as a means to an end, the end being weight loss.  Then it does feel like something we have to do, instead of something we want to do.  Perhaps that’s what the quote in Shape was alluding to… if that was their intention then they did it poorly.  My goal is to view exercising as a necessary part of feeling good in my own body.  If you are looking for motivation to exercise, I encourage you do the same.

 So what am I trying to do?  I have a great DVD- Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred, which has 30 minute workouts that combine strength, cardio, and ab work.  I’ve used it before with great results, and my goals is to do this DVD at home 3-4 times a week.  I’m hoping this blog will help keep me focused on this goal, as a regular exercise routine is one big hurdle I have to jump.  But I encourage all of you to find something that works for YOU, not what a magazine tells you.  The most important thing is moving your body, and we all just have to find a way to do it!

First off, I am not a doctor, nutritionist, anything like that.  I’m actually a marketing research analyst.  I’ll admit it: I am a big dork who loves to research.  I have a lot of questions and if there is an answer out there I’ll find it.  In particular, I’m obsessed with research pertaining to diet, nutrition, and weight loss.  Thus, I’ve read A LOT on all kinds of diets (yes, even low-fat ones).

So what’s my weight loss story?  I was overweight as a teen, and I always craved things with sugar and starch.  At the age of 21 I was diagnosed with PCOS, or poly-cystic-ovarian syndrome.  I’ll post more on what exactly that is later on, but it’s a condition that makes it harder for women to lose weight due to higher insulin levels.  If left untreated women with PCOS are at a higher risk for diabetes, cervical cancer, and complications with pregnancy.  After doing a lot of research on PCOS, I learned that the best thing to do is lose weight, and the next best thing is to go on a low-carb diet (good thing the two go hand-in-hand!).  So I did the low-carb diet and lost 30 pounds in 4 months.  Unfortunately, as a lot of these stories go, I gained all the weight back within 2 years.  Why?  Because I started eating carbs again!  I wouldn’t stop, even though carb binges gave me an upset stomach and in general made me feel like crap.  I started low-carb in November, and have lost 16 pounds so far, and this would probably be more if it weren’t for the holidays and the fact that I don’t exercise regularly (that’s another post, though).  Currently I’m steadily losing about a pound a half a week, which I’m happy with!

I’m going to chronicle my low-carb journey and show the world just what the process is like.  Of course I want to lose weight, but my ultimate goal for myself is to change my perceptions so that I can live like this forever.  My ultimate goal for this blog is to convince others my age (or any age really!) to do the same.  I think there are a lot of people out there who have seen blogs from prominent low-carbers that have achieved the weight loss through low-carbing, but have no clue what someone actually goes through day in and day out.  You always hear/read “You can do it!” but if you are like me you still have doubts as to whether or not you truly can change and stick with it.

I am a very honest person.  If I have something on my mind I say it without fear of being reprimanded by society or my peers.  This journey to low-carb enlightenment is going to be hard, and I’ll document both negative and positive emotions that I experience along the way.  Not eating what you want to and exercising regularly sucks sometimes- let’s be honest!  I won’t sugar-coat things (literally and figuratively) or be overly enthusiastic about going low-carb; it’s just not my style. I also psycho-analyze my feelings often, always trying to look for what exactly caused me to gain weight and how I can change that for the future.  I promise that you will see an honest portrayal of what life is like when you live low-carb.

A final thought: I’m sure there will be some people who read my blog that are firm believers that a low-carb diet is horrible and that one can never be successful or healthy while doing it.  I’ll tell you here and now that I won’t listen to you.  I know what is best for MY body, and you don’t.  I encourage anyone wanting to lose weight to find what best works for them, not what somebody else or the media tells them to do.

So, welcome to my blog!