Allyson | Week 6 | Living Low-Carb

There are more diets and ways to lose weight out there than I could even begin to count. I’m sure many of you have tried at least one of these diets at one time or another and may have had success, only to put the weight back on.  *The problem with “fad diets” is that they simply don’t work. Once you deprive yourself of something for any length of time and then are “allowed” to have it again, you go bazurk! Whether it be no sweets, no bread, no bacon, no cheese, no food, no whatever, if you are “not allowed” to have it, it suddenly becomes more desirable. Once you allow yourself to have a bite you’ll go off the deep end and put all that weight back on you just spent weeks taking off.

*I have a tendency to over-generalize.  Fad diets might work for you. If so, that’s amazing -count your lucky stars. But, for the majority of folks, fad diets just aren’t reasonable ways to live and they end up not working.

Diabetes

When we eat foods with sugar (sugar-sugar and starch-sugar; aka: carbs) our bodies use insulin to help convert the sugar to energy. With diabetes, the body either doesn’t produce enough insulin or it has a hard time using it. In turn, the sugar (carbs) builds up in blood cells and blood sugar levels spikes.  (This is the most basic explanation of diabetes/insulin/sugar conversion ever. To find out more, I HIGHLY suggest you check out the book Sugar Busters.)

Diabetes is prevalent in my family and my doctor has told me it’s not a matter of if I get it, rather a matter of when I get it. {Awesome.} If I continued the lifestyle I was living a couple years ago, my doctor said I would develop diabetes in my 50s, but if I changed how I ate and exercised I would push back the onset by decades.  So, basically I needed to start watching my carb intake.

While I don’t have diabetes, and I don’t even have a gluten allergy, I would say I am definitely carb-sensitive and eating high amounts of carbs negatively affects my body. Amidst other immediate ramifications from over-carbing, I gain weight easily when I eat a lot of carbs and, conversely, I lose weight more easily when I steer clear of them. Further reasons why I am a low-carber.

If for no other reason than those wonderful medical ones listed above, I am a low-carber out of competition. A few months before I started my weight-loss process my mom began her own and succeeded by cutting her carb intake. That strategy worked amazing for her so I decided to try it myself. We are both competitive and we motivated each other by an unspoken competition we had. We would see who could cook new recipes or eat at restaurants with the lowest carbs. We would text each other pictures of our low-carb fare and swap recipes and tips to cut carbs wherever possible. My mom was a huge motivator/supporter/ encourager in my transformation to a low-carb lifestyle.

I must admit (I think I already have a couple times, though) that I went a little nutso with the low-carbness. Last spring I dropped my intake to under 30 a day. (This is where the “fad diets don’t work” thing comes into play.) The first week or so that I was under 30 I dropped quite a few pounds, but then I got stuck and the scale wouldn’t budge. Someone suggested I may not have been eating enough calories and my body thought I was starving it. So I counted my calories one day, and to my surprise I only consumed around 700. Ridiculous. No wonder I was at a stalemate. I immediately increased my carb allowance to 50, and strived to reach 1100 calories/day and the pounds started coming off again. {So, if you think you can lose weight by starving yourself, you’re wrong. It seems so backwards, but you need to eat more (GOOD stuff) to lose more.}

Let’s be real, even 50 carbs per day is pretty low. Once my Fit Club competition was over I went off the deep end (as many do with fad diets and/or unrealistic diets). I started eating all the sweets in sight and totally stopped working out. I indulged and enjoyed all the treats of summer a little too much….and then fall…and then the holidays. And here I am,  8 pounds more than at the end of Fit Club.

Since blogging I have gotten back on track. I have been practicing carb-cycling, which I learned from Chris Powell’s book Choose to Lose, where I cycle every other day eating “high” carbs and than “low” carbs. (High is about 60-80; low is about 40-60)

Eating a low-carb life doesn’t mean you have to completely stop eating carbs. On my high days I have carbs with every meal (!)…but good carbs. I have switched to brown rice, rice pasta, sweet potatoes, more veggies, fewer fruits, and lots of protein. I still struggle with eating enough calories on my low days, so I always have a stash of cheese and turkey pepperoni in the fridge to bump me up to a healthy amount of calories. 

It can be easy to fall off the deep end. However, you can avoid that by avoiding fad and unrealistic diets and simply try to live a healthier life style with more whole grains, lots of veggies, little sugar, and exercise.

PS- I still have a Pinterest Board entitled “Dessert is my Favorite”…it still is my favorite, I just try to have it in moderation rather than every single day!

PPS- I am not trying to convert anyone to a low-carb lifestyle. I’m just sharing why it works for me, and maybe it would work for you. If you are stuck at a plateau and have never paid attention to how many carbs you eat, I would suggest track your carbs for a day. If you’re eating well over 100, try cutting down to 100 and see if you begin to make any progress again.

Allyson | Week 4| Food Rules

As I shared a couple weeks ago, I love to read.  Over the past couple years I have begun to really enjoy nonfiction books and  I have come across Michael Pollan and his books on how people should eat.  Last year I purchased a couple of his books, read them lickitysplit, and now I want to share them with you over the course of this blog. 

Give me a few moments to briefly introduce you to one of my favorites: Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.  This book is divided into three sections, each with about 20 “rules” we should follow when eating.  (Prior to Section 1, Pollan introduces the concepts behind all these “rules” by citing a few food facts about the “western diet”, its detrimental effects on our society, and what other cultures’ healthy diets look like.)

The sections are: 

1) What should I eat? (Eat food.) This section distinguishes REAL food from all the processed crap that dominates our society.

2) What kind of food should I eat? (Mostly plants.) In this section, Pollan breaks down the different categories of REAL food and suggests what foods should mostly be eaten.

3) How should I eat? (Not too much.)  This section sets out rules for when and how much to eat.

This is a very short book that can be read while waiting for a doctor’s appointment, but is packed full of (what should be) commonsensical  rules for what, when, and how we should be eating.  Over the next several blogs I will share with you some of my favorite rules.  I urge you, though, to invest the time into reading this book, as it is an investment in your health.  (You won’t even need to invest money if you borrow it from your local library!)

Rule #2: Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother* wouldn’t recognize as food. 

Would your great-grandmother even recognize any of those packaged products in the grocery store as food?  What is meat doing in a can?  Why are you eating something out of box?  What’s that you’re squeezing out of a tube?  Most of the products in our grocery store are not REAL food.  They are “foodish” or food-like products. They are not REAL, whole foods that our great-grandmothers, or even grandmothers, would recognize as being edible.  I challenge you: If your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize it as food, don’t eat it.

Rule #6: Avoid foods that have more than five (5) ingredients.  

Have you ever taken time to actually READ the ingredient labels on packaged foods? It can be astounding! So many foods have huge lists of foods and 90% of the ingredients can’t even be pronounced!  I truly try to stick to this rule and (when I buy prepackaged foods) I read almost all ingredient labels before ever buying a product.  Imagine my poor husband the night I decided to start living by this rule and we wanted cereal! You might think it’s impossible, but after some time searching we actually did find a few cereals that have five or fewer ingredients- and they are super tasty, too! 

I challenge you: next time you are at the store, look below the nutritional label and check out the ingredient list. Try to find (and buy) foods that have five or fewer ingredients. You might even find it to be a fun experience.  (If you share that competitive gene with me, you can compete with your shopping buddy to see who can find the most items on your grocery list with the fewest ingredients!)

*Speaking of grandmothers, I just have to give a special shout-out to mine! She called me over the weekend to tell me that I have inspired her to begin taking a line-dancing class and to join a Strong Women group.  (To think, I inspired her!  This is quite the turn of events as she has always been such an inspiration to me!) At one point she said, “…and I’m an old woman!”  So there-- if an “old woman” can get moving, so can you!