Anyone who has followed a low calorie diet, then compared it to a low carb diet will notice that low calorie doesn’t always equal low carb and vice versa. I can attest that just counting calories and following a low calorie diet will not always work and often leaves you hungry as well as frustrated and unhappy. I was never a huge overeater although I probably ate a little more than my body needed. If I went on a strict 1000 calorie diet, I could lose weight, but I was often hungry. It’s also not easy to maintain and it is depressing to think you can’t enjoy any of the foods that you really love. What’s the point in life if you can’t enjoy it? So you slip off and eventually revert back.
I think people need to find out how their body processes food, how much of it and what kinds. I went on a low carb diet for the first time when I was just out of high school and lost a lot of weight that I kept off for about six years before it began creeping back as my diet slipped back to old habits and I was exercising less. The same pattern repeated when I went on a low calorie diet and I kept the weight off again for several years, before the pounds returned with friends. In between, I’d had success with several other diet options, but none of them a plan for life.
When I went on Atkins this time, I noticed that the plan had changed its approach. Instead of 40 carbs to begin, the diet was now talking net carbs, which are the carbs that your body actually uses of what you consume. Two weeks at 20 net carbs to start, then you gradually add carbs until you stop losing weight, drop a few carbs back and that’s what you eat to continue to lose. Then you go back up to the stall amount and you’re at the carbs you actually burn. Makes sense. Along the way, you audition food to see which foods may stall your diet and which seem to help. Starch and sugars are really the culprits and since this helps you limit them, it also makes a low carb diet a good choice for diabetics or anyone who needs to control their blood sugar.
Well, it didn’t take long for me to figure out that the max number of net carbs I could eat and not gain weight was about 23 a day. Not a happy number for me. So, 20 carbs was my ideal for losing weight and that means a fairly slow weight loss. Over the past four years, I’ve lost 142 pounds (as of April 15. 2014). Considering that I am not a really active person, that’s not bad. I am retired and I don’t do a lot of exercising, so I am thinking that if I can establish some kind of regular exercise program, I might be able to up the carbs a little.
Now, when I say 20 carbs a day, that might cause a panic, but again, this is net carbs – carbs that my body actually uses. All the rest are pass through and there are a lot of those. Still, on average, I eat about 40 to 65 carbs a day. But when you consider all the things you can eat that have little or no carbs in them, like many meats, cheese, eggs, and some vegetables, then you see that the majority of your carbs can be spent on vegetables and fruits with lower carb counts and reduced-carb food items.
All of these new products with reduced carbs, make it possible to eat delicious food you love and still stay within your low carb lifestyle. And I think that will be the key to not gaining the weight back this time. If you can have delicious and “legal” food, then you’re less likely to wander.
Which brings me to one of the reasons I decided to blog my recipes and my stories. If I put it out there, I hope it will help to keep me on course over the years and will encourage others to do the same. I just wish I’d known how my body handled food earlier in my life and that the food substitutes had been as plentiful as they are now.
Originally posted on my blog on 08/26/2012