I would not do it now since you are so far from your goal. The appropriate time to do it is when you are close to goal.

If you do not mind my asking, what happened exactly? Did eating carbs become habitual? Or did eating carbs once a month cause weight gain?

I'm not bragging. I'm not claiming to be superior to anyone, but when I eat carbs, I do not get more cravings. That's just how I'm built. My head doesn't work that way.

Having said that, do I equate carbs with fun? Yeah, a little bit. I used to brew my own beer, loved to bake, g/f and I used to go wine tasting every summer (we live near vineyards). That's why I am considering leaving Atkins for a carb cycling diet. For what it's worth, in October took a week off to see what would happen. This was an experiment. I had no issue recovering, but that was the one and only cheat in an entire year.



Maybe my profile is out of date? I'm just 9lbs away. Is that far? Anyway, I'm not going to do anything now. I was thinking like August.

Great reply. Thx.

I'm 29. I'm resistant to the carb ladder because I simply dislike all the foods on the ladder. Brown rice and berries? Nothx. Besides, this lets me eat even less carbs 99% of the time. It's a good thing.

BTW - You have me leaning against making this change. I didn't realize a day out of ketosis meant a 10lb gain.

It appears that my strategy is different than most of you posting to this thread.

To me, it truly is a YMMV kind of thing. So knowing yourself is a vital component to experimenting.
I did not begin with Atkins and did my first 2 weeks the South Beach way. My initial carbs were much higher than most others here. But I did my first 2 weeks squeaky clean. Lost over 100 lbs and have kept it all off for almost 10 yrs now. So when I tell you my strategy, know that it did work for me.

I never did a 'carbnite' as you call it. What I did do was isolate certain old favorites foods that as a newbie, would dominate my mind as in, 'you can never have it again so just obsess over that'.
I picked 3-4 old favs which shall go nameless. Once a month, I allowed myself to have a portion, as in 4ozs of whatever it was...just to shut my stupid mind down. It worked for me.
So I wouldn't do a whole night or day, but I did allow myself to have a bit of an old favorite as I worked to evolve my food to where it is today.

Hope this helps!

I've done it recently.
It actually helped break a legitimate stall.
I gained 5lb of water weight temporarily. But then I kept losing because I limited the Carb Nite to its intended parameters, supper till bedtime and that's it, woke the next day, fasted till noon and was back on plan immediately.

I've done 3. I haven't done another recently, as I genuinely do feel kind of yucky the next 2 days as I burn out the sugar in my system. TMI, but headache, carb-hangover, and gas. But I am keeping it in my pocket for another true stall.

I'm able to go right back to low-carbing immediately after, so it isn't apocalypse for me. If you aren't someone who can cheat for a couple hours then go right back to business, it may be disastrous for you. If you can handle it, as long as it remains occasional (like every 2 weeks for a finite window) then if you lose weight on it, or not gain, go for it.

Wait, now I remember you! You're this guy. You asked this question before. Did you think we'd all change our minds?

(The context the first time around was with respect to traveling. My advice to anyone just tuning in still stands: don't ruin an expensive trip by cheating. It's stressful enough on your body.)

Oh for gosh sakes. I thought this thread seemed familiar.

Why do you keep asking the same question? If you find you can go on high carbohydrate holidays, and recover okay, and you're happy with the experiment, why don't you just go ahead and do what pleases you? I don't mean this in a harsh way. But experience will tell you how you'll respond to approaching things in this way better than any of us can.

What is this, an annual event? Your last thread went for 9 pages! I'll wrap this up by simply pointing out that you're specifically concerned with weight loss only. So be it. Many of the answers here are from those desiring to help who are focused on improving health with weight loss as one of the many benefits. Go ahead and indulge yourself. I'm not going to tell you what you want to hear.

No, having popcorn at the movies once a month or a piece of cake on my birthday wasn't enough to cause weight gain.
It was that eating high carb became habitual. It started out with high carb once or twice a month, and slowly but surely it became more of an everyday thing as life happened, I got depressed, and just stopped caring about doing carbs as occasional treats, and instead wanted to chase the quick pick me up they provided when everything else sucked.

Sorry, I wasn't accusing you of bragging that was just my sense of humor. I tend to be dry and self-depreciating, so I was aiming it more at my own lack of willpower rather than saying something about yours.


I do understand about equating carbs with fun. Everyone has something in life where eating high carb foods is associated with a good time because they're so prevalent in our culture.
However, that sort of cognitive restructuring is part of the process of making weightloss permanent.
Can carbs be fun? Heck yeah! However, they also have effects, both short and long term, that are not fun at all.

And are they they only way to have fun? No, not at all. There are ways to have creativity time, and couple time without carbs.

The beer is a tricky one, but baking low carb is definitely possible. Since going low carb I bake way more than I ever did before because I have to!

Wine is actually a fairly low carb friendly alcohol, particularly if you have a taste for dry wines. Yes, alcohol can cause stalls, but that is one of those things that you can start introducing as you go into maintenance.
I'd feel much better about a few glasses of Champagne, or even Pinot Noir, as a treat than I would a cookie.

Speaking as one who's here daily in recent months but wasn't here for Round 1, I'm a kind of impressed that those who participated in both threads carry the same message in each. It affirms my belief that some folks here are very open and honest.

I'm also LOLing a tiny bit about Round 2 starting to take off, but that's likely because I didn't witness the first...

OK, so at the very least, Whitecrane has gone from asking permission to take a week off to asking permission to do it for just one night. I suppose we can see that as progress.

Lmao. Freeze. Can we all backtrack a few posts?

That was an experiment. It went well.

This is a different topic. "CarbNite" is a dietary plan. Not a week of taking a break from the diet. It is, as described a number of hours of eating carbs performed with regular repetition. some people do it weekly, but I think that's probably a bad idea.

The prior topic was literally, about taking a week off from the diet / plan. Yes, there's a world of difference between breaking the rules 1-2 times a year and breaking them 1-2 times a month. That (the other post from last year) was an attempt at understanding how much damage I was going to do to myself. This however is a discussion on transitioning to a different weight loss plan, long term weight loss plan. Not an excuse for a cheat week.

http://carbnite.com/

This tells me what I needed to know regarding eating carbs on scheduled nights. Thank you. I don't know if I'm going to proceed or not in the near future. But if I do experiment with the CarbNite plan, I will post results here.

There should be more information documented about alternatives to lifetime low carb lifestyles. Whether other people choose to persue it or not is on them.

Actually, it would be better if you posted in the Semi Low-Carb Plans section .
In fact, there's already an ongoing discussion thread in the Semi-LC forum about the Carb Nite Solution plan.

Doreen

I hope it works out for you.

I have tried carb-ups in the past. I didn't get any obvious benefit from them, and for some reason couldn't really work up much enthusiasm for them, so I stopped. I seem to have come to a point where putting pasta under meat sauce, or wheat crust under pizza topping makes it less appealing instead of more.

If I'm going to do a little off-plan recreational eating, turns out I'd much rather have peanuts.