Quote:
Originally Posted by xStarlitex
... because I get tired of meat and eggs. I literally gag on them after a while
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I've done the weight loss, gain, loss, gain thing - creeping ever higher -- since my early 20's. In the past 30 years I've had 8 to 10 good attempts where I stuck to my diet long enough to have a significant ride down the weight loss roller coaster. I did Weight Watchers once - but most attempts have been LC. Once I got past the first few days, this diet got a lot easier. However, I always hit that same wall where the LC food I was eating just started to turn my stomach. At 2 months in, I'd look at a nice quality steak and practically gag at the thought of putting one more bite in my mouth. It was at that point that I would finally crack and have cheats and "planned" LC off days. The carbs never tasted so good - and I found it even harder to stick with my program. The diet became struggle and misery. I could not sustain it. Eventually my willpower would run out and that was it. The diet was over. I avoided the scale and the weight came back on. I just was not tough enough to stick to it.
My current weight loss attempt started in February 2014. I have been at it for 15 months - 2 1/2 times longer than any previous attempt. I've lost nearly 170 pounds. The only change I made this time is that I vowed that I would not cheat and not eat any off plan food no matter what. No breaks, no 'just one bites', nothing. I knew it was going to be misery and hell -- but I just had to do it. My weight was out of control and my health was starting to take a severe turn for the worse. I ate the same LC foods as before - but NO CHEATS, EVER was my mantra. No head games - the answer to whether I was going to have this or that off plan food was always going to be NO. No birthday cake, no pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, no to the donuts on the kitchen table, no, no, no. And that is what I did and I'm still doing it.
Still, at about 2 months into the diet I hit the same wall. I could hardly choke down food I was quite happy with in the early days of the diet. The misery and hell was starting to set in. But rather than follow my usual formula of off-plan cheats - I stuck to my no-cheat rule and pushed on. To try and stave off the food boredom, I looked for new LC recipes, used more spices, tried different types of Fat Bombs, made homemade LCHF ice cream, etc. - anything to try and make this boredom issue better. It didn't really work all that well - nothing could replace that certain something that I was missing from regular (carby) food. But this trying new LC foods did do two things... It kept me busy and it kept me on plan. I would still overeat on-plan food on some days and even exceeded my carb limit a few times -- but no off-plan foods ever touched my lips.
Then, maybe 3 or 4 months in, something started to change. In my 30 years of repeated diet failures, I'd never been 100% on plan this long before. Slowly but surely I started liking what I was eating more and more. I felt healthier -- still extremely fat -- but healthier. I started to forget why bread, pizza, pasta, candies, and cakes were so critical to my eating pleasure. My brain stopped obsessing about the carby junk I was missing and just seemed to let go. At 6 months in, this life long diet of misery and pain that I was certain that I would have to endure forever WAS OVER. The food boredom was over. Meat, eggs, green beans, broccoli, carrots, salad, etc. were now A-OK with me. I no longer gag at the thought of them - I love them. That is when my diet morphed into a permanent lifestyle change. My new WOE became enjoyable and sustainable. It was a happy day when I realized that I actually would reach goal this time. I'm not wishing and hoping -- I will reach my goal. It is pretty easy to stick to something that you enjoy doing.
Now I don't know if this shift from diet misery to happiness will happen for everybody, but I can tell you that it was totally unexpected. Had I known that simply staying on plan long enough would make such a dramatic shift happen, I would have figured out this weight loss thing a long time ago. The best way I can put it is that my food paradigm shifted and now embraces the foods that I do eat. With enough separation (days on plan), my brain gave up that lifelong 'need' for carbs and sugar and let all the foods that I now eat bump up into the top slots on my favorite foods list. I still have my moments of temptation. It takes a long time to retrain your brain. However, it is so much easier to stay on plan than it has ever been. And I KNOW from experience, that it is much easier to resist the urge to eat off plan than it is to recover from an off plan cheat. I can't fail if I stick to what is easier.
A year ago I was thinking that I'd be climbing the Atkins carb ladder when I get to maintenance. When LC dieting is misery, you have to have that light at the end of the tunnel to keep you going. These days, my thoughts on maintenance have changed. I read somewhere that 'if you go back to eating the foods that made you fat, you will be fat again'. If climbing the carb ladder is done right - as Dr. Atkins describes it, it would work. But from what I see, most people don't follow the plan to the letter (if at all) and climbing the carb ladder often leads to disaster. I know I am extremely insensitive to carbs and sugar. Climbing the carb ladder would be testing fate and my willpower. I can predict with reasonable certainty that I would no doubt fail at it. I'd go back to eating the foods that made me fat and I'd get fat again. So since I enjoy what I'm doing now, why would I risk it? My new plan is to stick with what I am doing in maintenance and live out my days at or near the same carb level that I am at today. Ketosis seems to agree with me.
I got a little longwinded here, so to make my point clear -- the food boredom/gag reflex to LC food can change. It is a phase of this WOE. IMO - it is the addiction to carbs talking and your brains last ditch effort to steer you back to the foods you loved to eat. You just have to stick to on-plan food long enough and this boredom phase will end. That is how it worked for me.
In the old days, I could eat peanut butter & jelly toast for breakfast everyday. I never got tired of it. These days I eat eggs and breakfast meats just about everyday - and never get tired of it. My current foods have become my new normal and I've broken free from my carb addiction.