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Originally Posted by leicester
Oh oh ! Thanks so much all of you, I am so grateful for all this insight. It makes a tremendous difference when you have your spirits lifted with all this support. I know I can keep going as I feel so much better than I did. I now need to shift into a mindset of patience and who knows, at my weigh in on Monday I might have made some progress. Thankyou so much for your help.
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Hi Leicester....don't despair, but I do know exactly how you feel, I've had my own issues over the last few years. I'm about to turn 69, and for a long time I bought into things I read such as "you can't lose weight when you are older." NOT TRUE! However, I did learn that losing now is different for me than it was 10, 20 years ago, and I had to strategize to figure out what works for me.
I've learned that it came down to figuring out which foods agreed with me, and which foods made me hold on to water. Atkins proved to be a great diet because along the way (actually, I found this out the first time I tried Atkins in 2008) I learned I can't eat gluten. When I first did Atkins I felt GREAT for the first time ever, and later I understood that one of the reasons was that I was eating no grains. I had thought for my entire life that I had issues with dairy....but my dairy issues were more connected to the gluten. I also have trouble with corn, other grains, and starches. But by eating only the very limited Atkins induction allowed food, you can start to figure things out.
I've experimented a lot and you probably need to do what I've done: through experimentation, learn which foods your body likes and which it doesn't, and that even includes foods allowed on Atkins, some foods will work better than others for you. It's much easier to do this experimentation while doing Atkins because it's almost an "elimination" diet anyway, and if you start with Induction Atkins foods you are eating a very small universe of foods so that's very helpful. Stick with induction for a few weeks and see how you feel. That's the first step.
Induction Atkins allows 1 oz cheese per day, and basically no dairy such as cream etc. Butter is OK. I'd advise sticking to that because it's possible dairy is an issue for you. To some extent it is for me....I can't take in much dairy, but the good thing is that I no longer want to. Butter is great, but the cheese and cream MIGHT be problematic for you, so try to figure that out. I could not eat dairy much for my whole life, but after I stopped eating gluten I found I COULD eat limited dairy without a problem. However, to maintain weight I can eat more dairy than I can eat if I want to lose weight.
One thing I learned along the way is that some foods cause bloat and may limit weight loss and some just don't agree with me, so I'm watching for that. If I want to lose weight, what works for me (and you might very well be different) is a day somewhat like this, and another point I'll mention is that I feel best and lose weight best when I eat from a fairly limited pool of foods.
I eat 2 "meals" per day and basically don't have snacks because I don't need or want snacks. For "breakfast", which I eat late, I virtually always have 2 or 3 pieces of bacon and one egg cooked in butter, plus green tea and later a cappuccino made with 2 TB whipped half and half. This is usually mid to late morning. Sometimes I skip breakfast entirely, but usually I eat it. Then dinner at 5 or 6 pm. I gave up doing fancy recipes and I stick to some sort of meat or fish or poultry (if fish or poultry I prepare with butter to add fat) and either a simple salad with olive oil/vinegar dressing or a green veggie with butter. Instead of salad, I might have some sort of green veggie such as spinach with butter, etc. Dessert treat is sugar free jello, at least in the beginning. I have a horrendous sweet tooth that I have to keep under control, but SF jello doesn't seem to mess with my sugar cravings. When I'm out and about, another treat might be a second cappuccino, which I always have them make as "dry" (not much dairy in it, and I request half and half or cream).
FASTING: I've experimented with it, and have done 24 hour and even one 36 hour fast. No major weight drops after doing this. Occasionally I'll still end up doing a 24 hour fast due to circumstances that make it convenient (when for some reason I just don't have breakfast). However, as a routine I almost always do a 14-16 hour fast between my early dinner and late breakfast each day, so that is another type of intermittent fasting that works out very well for me.
Eating this way, I get into ketosis very quickly, and the glorious thing about the Atkins Induction way of eating is that my hunger level gets really low quite quickly after just a couple of days, and I can't eat and don't even want a lot of food. My calories tend to end up around 800 to 1,0000 (not by design, it just ends up that way), and I am easily able to keep carbs at 10 or fewer. My only goal is to keep carbs at 10 or fewer! I'll add that eating this way is naturally limiting in calories because I simply cannot stuff down tons of eggs or bacon or other meat.
What I found out about myself at this age is that my optimum ability to drop weight is at under 1000 calories and 10 or fewer carb grams, but I'll emphasize again, I end up at this level in a totally natural way because I don't want as much food. I just pay attention CARBS and I try to eat higher fat where I can, and I don't overdo protein. I have a little program that I enter my food into so I get readings for carbs, protein, fat and calories as well and thus know what those are. But I concern myself with CARBS, and over time I have seen that I don't lose weight on even that 20g carbs mentioned by Atkins, I have to go lower than that to lose weight at a good clip like I want to. My maintenance level of carbs once I get off all the weight I want is probably going to be 20-30g max. That's just me, however, you could be different, we're all different. Carbs add water weight and bloat on me, plain and simple. If you aren't losing, I'd advise dropping carbs to 10g or so and see what happens. So count carbs and drop them for awhile, that's one thing to try. When you get carbs that low, other things will fall into place.
The BEST thing about Atkins is when I eat the foods that work for me, I'm never very hungry, I can't eat a lot, I'm satisfied with what I eat, and I have plenty of energy. Things just hum along, and I can lose a bit, I might then stay at the exact same weight for a few days, go up slightly one day, then go back down, but overall and over a week or two, the weight loss is steady and I can lose weight as long as I continue like this.
Another tip: We have all been led to believe fat is bad, but when carbs & sugar are kept very low, fat is your friend. I've clearly seen with myself that when fat % of my food is too low, I don't lose as well. For example, I'll lose more quickly when my meat choice is a fatty meat rather than lean fish or chicken. When I used to eat carbs, fat upset my digestive system terribly, and I thought meat didn't generally agree with me. In the absence of carbs, I do GREAT with meat, with fatty meat, and never an upset. It seems crazy, but I can't argue with how great I feel eating fatty meat and really low carbs.
If you don't know about the mechanics of all this and how diet affects the body, go get the Gary Taubes book "Why We Get Fat", or his other book (a more in-depth study) "Good Calories, Bad Calories." Knowing the full science is really helpful to getting confidence in this way of eating. There is so much downright wrong information about how to lose weight out there. My health has never been better than it has been since I started Atkins. I've had my slip-ups, but I've basically eaten with Atkins principles in mind for the last 10 years.
The most basic but magic thing about very low carb eating is that when you get your body switched to a fat burning metabolism, your body accesses and burns your stored fat for fuel, thus reducing it over time. When you eat carbs above a certain level, the body preferentially uses the carbs for fuel (using carbs for fuel is easier so the body chooses that if it's available) and no longer burns your stored body fat, your body's ability to tap into stored, excess body fat is essentially blocked. This is the core concept of using a very low carb diet to switch your body into a fat burning metabolism. The thing to keep in mind is that if you are in a fat burning metabolism and you eat a bunch of carbs and sugar, you can set the process back and it will take a few days to get back into a fat burning metabolism again. That's why the "cheat meal" each week is so bad.
Feel free to ask anything else, I'm happy to help. All of us here can offer ideas, but what exactly works for each of us is always slightly different. I will say that while what you are eating looks fairly good and is minimal food, it could be the wrong food choices for you if you aren't losing, and therefore, that's your signal to change things up with the foods. I've learned that food choices, not amounts, have a very strong impact on your body's ability to burn and release fat.
Carole
Which is why I am back again.
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