Hi there fellow low carbers!

Seeing as I'm feeling a bit ill today with a nasty cold, and seeing as all my family are away for the day and I've been ordered to "take it easy" and "leave the chores", I have a fantastic excuse for recording my own particular milestones

Which is: as of today, I have reached the following milestones:

1) I have lost exactly five kilos since Jan 12th 2009 (i.e. 11 pounds);

2) I have only five pounds to go till goal!!!

I am really quite proud of myself, for the following reasons:

1) My journal title is "I am determined to stick with this!" - and I have!!!

2) I feel I am getting healthier, especially as far as alcohol intake is concerned. I noticed that beer (why do I have to live in Germany, where beer is soooo good???) and low-carbing do not really go together - unless gaining weight is your aim - and have been quite successful in cutting down my alcohol intake. So far this year, 124 days out of 160 have been beer free!

3) I have been willing to try out new things, such as Vitamin D3 supplementation, a decision I have not had reason to regret so far, as well as my latest new experiment, cutting out bread. The latter has resulted in my being able to bring my carbs down to about 50-60g a day, instead of about 70g a day, which, although the difference is small, has made a difference to the speed of the weight loss I have been experiencing. Also, I feel that it may be a good health choice for me now (at the age of 45) anyway, as it seems to have an effect on the slight arthritis I have in a spot on my right hand. Cutting out bread might seem an easy thing to the rest of you, but, as I mentioned, I live in Germany, and in the village I have lived in for the last seven years, there are some farmers who bake bread once a week, and I have become pretty addicted to it, I fear... It is delicious, but I think I now have to accept that my bread tolerance limit seems to have been reached and that some kind of "poison level" has been reached in my system. Rather than regarding this bread as delicious, I now need to do some new brainwashing on myself!!! I have taught myself that beer is really not good for me, especially not if I want to lose weight, and now I have to learn to hate bread, too...

But, to cut a long story short, I have come this far: I will manage the next five pounds!!!

My "deadline" is August 12th 2009, which is when we go on holiday. I hope I'll have got the last five pounds gone by then, or at least most of them!!!

Wish me luck!!!

amanda

Good going!

Well done, Amanda.. Good luck with the last 5 lbs.

Best of luck to you Amanda! Im sure you will do exactly what you hope to do.
Where in Germany are you? I was a military wife for nearly 20 years and lived in Germany for a little over 7 years. My son was born in Neurnberg.(I am now back home in NC) I def. know what you mean about the bread. Brotchen was a weakness for me. And the weissbrat. Well.. no more need be said on that note.
Anyway... good luck!

I'm wishing you good luck and also congratulations!
I notice you only had 17 lbs to loose total. I only had between 15 & 20 and it bugs me because people keep saying that's why it's so hard, or sort of have the attitude that that little isn't a big deal. To me that kind of thinking makes it harder to stay committed.
I am in agreement - 5 more pounds gone by August 12th!!!

Thank you very much for your kind words!!!

I know what you mean about the "small amount" we have to lose seeming insignificant to some people, but we really should take no notice of that!!!

I know that I still have a lot of extra wobble on my upper thighs and the butt is still pretty prominent compared with women I know who have more athletic figures. OK, to most people, I probably look OK as I am, but the peskiest thing is at my current weight is that I am between sizes!!! A US 8 is what I'm aiming for, but most size 8 jeans are a tad too tight still, and the 10s are starting to look really baggy and unattractive, too!!! So, to find clothes that fit nicely, I have to lose about another five pounds, whether I like it or not!!!

Plus, I really do not like the way my thighs jiggle about when I see myself in a full-length mirror walking around after a weigh-in!!!

Take care and good luck with your own project!

amanda

Thank you very much for your kind words!!!

I know what you mean about the "small amount" we have to lose seeming insignificant to some people, but we really should take no notice of that!!!

I know that I still have a lot of extra wobble on my upper thighs and the butt is still pretty prominent compared with women I know who have more athletic figures. OK, to most people, I probably look OK as I am, but the peskiest thing is at my current weight is that I am between sizes!!! A US 8 is what I'm aiming for, but most size 8 jeans are a tad too tight still, and the 10s are starting to look really baggy and unattractive, too!!! So, to find clothes that fit nicely, I have to lose about another five pounds, whether I like it or not!!!

Plus, I really do not like the way my thighs jiggle about when I see myself in a full-length mirror walking around after a weigh-in!!!

Take care and good luck with your own project!

amanda

Congratulations on your success!

Thanks so much!

Looks like you have made some good progress yourself, too! Well done!

amanda

Congrats to you!! You have done amazingly well, and you should be very proud of yourself. I have 12 more to go and am just as determined as you are! We can do this!

Congratulations, Amanda! I cannot wait until I'm at my last 5...you must be so proud of yourself and rightfully so! As for it being a smaller amount, it's always been my belief that it's harder to lose when you have a smaller amount. You don't see the results as quickly as someone who does have more to lose and it's easier to become discouraged. My hat is off to you and everyone who doesn't seem to have a lot to lose, but are working just as hard as those of us who do have more.

Congrats Amanda -you should be very proud!

I hear you all when saying it is more difficult to lose just a small amount. I broke my ankle and put on 1.5 stones (just over 20lb for the US members).

And although I am not what people would desribe as 'fat', none of my clothes fit now! So it is vital for me to lose this amount, however tiny it may seem to others.

I went off the forum for a while as I had a lot of other stuff going on, so although I have mainly stuck with the diet, it has not been as strict as I would like.

So here's to the last 10lb for me as well - I hope you reach your 5lb goal, Amanada.

Hi Kimberleyb,

Thanks for the congrats and good luck with your last 10lbs!!!

One thing I did to motivate myself was to regularly try on my "Eddie Bauer Bermuda Trousers of Truth" to see if they fit any better. At the beginning of the year I could not get into them for the life of me. And now they fit again!!!

It was a real motivation to see how, bit by bit, they began to fit me again, till, a few weeks ago, I was able to wear them without feeling that the zip would burst open!!!

Hope you will be able to wear your favourite clothes again soon!

amanda

Hi to everyone who has dropped in on this thread and passed on their congratulations!!!

Your kind words and encouragement mean a lot to me.

However, I feel like I owe you a kind of explanation, (or even apology???)

I wonder whether some of you might think I have "cheated" or "moved the goalposts", so I'd like to explain myself a little.

This time last year I decided that my goal weight was 61kg/135lbs, which I almost reached for about a minute. Then there was the football here in Europe, and I watched a lot of football on TV and drank beer... So I went back up to about 138lbs by mid-summer. I maintained my weight till Christmas, then kind of lost it, what with one thing and another, and by January 12th 2009, I was back up to 146lbs.

At some point in the spring, I changed my goal weight from 135lbs to 130lbs, as I had decided that I really would like to see the number 59 (my old goal weight in kilos) as I felt the psychological effect of seeing a number 5 at the beginning of my kilo weight would be tremendous!!!

However, I have just had a change in thinking due to having read a new book, "The Schwarzbein Principle II: The Transition" by Dr Diana Schwarzbein.

Reading this book, which goes into some detail about the hormones insulin, adrenaline and cortisol, I saw myself described. Since my late teens/early 20s, I have been what you could call an "adrenaline junkie". Rushing around, doing loads of stuff, getting a kick out of being on top of 20 jobs at once, never sitting down for longer than 5 minutes: that's me. However, I am now 45 and this way of life is no longer doing me any good.

I used to smoke, drink coffee like there was no tomorrow and drink beer pretty much every night.

When I became a mother, just over 12 years ago, I knew I wanted to change my habits and look after myself better. I have made good progress since then, but things could still be better.

In December 2001, I gave up cigarettes for good and have never looked back for a minute. By Easter 2003 I had unfortunately - giving up smoking does this to you sometimes - put on a lot of weight... My highest weight was 165lbs, which was a lot on my 5'5" frame. I managed to lose weight (on a very low-fat diet, but that is another story) and since 2004 maintained my weight more or less at about about 140lbs, going up and down a bit, but not that much.

My low-carb story started in May 2007 and I am now totally committed to this WOE as it suits my metabolism and tastes fine, but I have had a tendency to put the weight back on again, lose it again, and so on. The main reason is that I let myself get stressed out, which sometimes leads me into drinking beer, and then the weight goes back on.

Having read SPII, I now feel that the time has come for me to address the following issues:

The way I deal with stress, to stop being an adrenaline junkie, to stop dealing with stress by having alcohol, to stop relying on coffee and being busy to get this unhealthy adrenaline kick.

I have got my weight to 136.4lbs, which is perfectly acceptable! That translates into a BMI (for what it's worth) of 22.9 and I do look reasonably slim. I have decided that this weight is fine, and that, although I do not want it to go up again, my main priority is no longer getting to that "magic" 130lb mark, but to improve how I deal with stress and to wean myself off caffeine and to carry on with reducing my beer consumption.

Since January 12th 2009, I have drunk a heck of a lot less beer than I used to - just on about 40 occasions out of about 150 days (I don't have my diary here right now with the exact statistics), rather than every night which used to be the case. I am really pleased about this, but, as I say, I still feel the need to slow down and stop relying on coffee during the day.

Hence my decision to change my stats and abandon my "last five pounds" project...

I really hope that nobody feels I have "let the side down" in making this decision, but I really feel that it is the right thing for me to do. I have been able to maintain my weight for the last five years (only going up ten pounds every now and then, but then losing again) and I feel that this is not the issue any more, as I can do the maintenance thing: it's the reliance on caffeine during the day, the temptation to drink beer when I'm stressed, my tendency to rush around that I now want to deal with.

The Schwarzbein food plan is also low-carb, although not as low as Atkins induction. It allows me to eat pretty much the way I already was eating for the last two years, just with a few more carbs. So I am not "abandoning" the LC WOE or anything, I firmly believe that of the many WOE in our modern world, this has to be the healthiest, I am just shifting priorities away from focussing only on numbers, and am now going to try and improve other areas of my life.

I am reasonably confident that I will succeed as I have already made considerable improvements on various fronts!

Please wish me luck and feel free to pop into my journal!

amanda

Great Job Honey! Keep up the good work...like I totally hear you on the hard job of living without beer, 'specially in an environment who's culture revolves around it. You are doing really well and deserve to be proud of yourself.
Peace, love and low carb!