Food as fuel. Are we to be automatons and give up one of life's true pleasures (FOOD) in order to achieve a smaller dress size?
That's like saying "Let's have coitus, Hazel, I want another child"..."Okay, Harold, I have five minutes to spare"!!!
It's like walking on your basement treadmill when it's a sunny day outside; what does it matter? It's only exercise.
I know this forum is for supporting members in their low-carb lifestyle, and I am here almost every day reading to find that support and encouragement that we all need, especially when tackling something as difficult and life-changing as a long-term diet and alteration of not just what we eat but how and why.
I appreciate the feedback from Nancy and ojoj very much, and will try to re-think my negative feelings about this WOE, and will check out more LC recipes for inspiration. I do not want to go above my 20-25 carbs/day yet, though, as my weight loss has been so slow on induction that I could not stand the idea of losing weight any more slowly in exchange for a bit more lettuce! There are very few veggies that I like to eat as it is (I have the palate of a six-year-old, unfortunately).
I didn't say earlier, but part of the problem, for me, with this WOE is that I have been suffering significant gastric distress -- with burping, food seeming to sit in my tummy for hours, "bathroom" problems and even nausea. I have never felt worse! And, the scale isn't moving. It is a lot to handle for little apparent pay-off. Many on this list seem to be ecstatic about their new-found energy and rapid weight loss. I only chime in to say that this is not always the case, and it does not always feel "worth it" to give up so much for so little. End of gripe (sorry).

Each to his own, food is fuel to me and no, I get no real pleasure from eating out, from having a cake, overeating til I feel sick - been there, done it and I dont want it back. Its not even about a smaller dress size anymore, its about a freedom that I'm embracing, no IBS, arthritic joints, lethargy and no climbing the walls trying to find will power.

But no, I dont liken it to any other human desire - just food!

Jo xxx

Hi there.. I'm going to throw my 2 pence worth. Atkins low carb works well....IF you like that style of eating. I'm a person who likes savory food so for me Atkins means eating from the fridge, back and forth until I'm satisfied. I live alone but cook food for others. Don't like breakfast and not really interested in the coffee with coconut oil... I've had my gall bladder removed so I just have the normal amount of fats. Yes, you can get constipated if you don't drink enough fluids.
Maybe you should try a week or so on a potato hack! Sorts out all the digestive problems and works well. It's good for a change and many people like it. I do it whenever I'm fed up with meat and I get the benefit of a great nights sleep. Read up about it and just give it a go. It's a doddle to prep and so cheap too!
Good luck....

Yeah, I think having an accepting palate is very important. One can broaden their tastes, but it does take work, dedication, and most importantly, the desire to do so.

My last boyfriend and I were very incompatible in that regard. He had very limited likes in the food dept and I love lots of food, plus I'm always eager to try new stuff. He just had no interest in expanding his horizons at all. I think the issue extended far beyond eating for him.

I love food too, but for me there's a line between obsessing about it and enjoying it. I remember doing a low fat diet once where all I could think about was food. This is infinitely preferable!

I totter between phases where I fuss about cooking and then phases where I spend little time cooking.

[QUOTE=teresaw] Maybe you should try a week or so on a potato hack! Sorts out all the digestive problems and works well. It's good for a change and many people like it. I do it whenever I'm fed up with meat and I get the benefit of a great nights sleep. Read up about it and just give it a go. [QUOTE]

I have found a fairly clear explanation of the "potato hack", and quote it here:
"The theory is because your body needs fat to manufacture insulin, if you are eating ZERO fat, it has to pull fat out of storage to manufacture insulin. Because white potatoes are so highly insulogenic and create such a massive, high GI response, it needs A LOT of insulin – which requires a significant portion of fat. Since you aren’t eating fat along with it, it is forced to go to adipose tissue as a source – and needs quite a bit – to make all that insulin."

Okay, this is an intriguing idea which I have not heard about before. The problem, FOR ME, is that I am both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetic. I make basically ZERO insulin, and am insulin resistant (have to inject large amounts of the stuff). So I don't think a diet which is "highly insulinogenic" would be great for me. What is my poor body to think?

The best thing about the LC diet is that my insulin requirements have reduced by about 25% and my blood sugars are (finally) in a good range. In Canadian-numbers terms, I run about 8-12 now. You multiply by 18 (I believe) for US values. I'm afraid that eating a steady diet of potatoes would drive my numbers sky-high again, and require much more insulin -- which of course puts on weight. And just from the tedium factor I'd be throwing potatoes at the wall by Day 2.

Oh, didn't realise...then the potato hack really isn't for you....... Maybe someone else can give you ideas.

I was thinking about this topic yesterday. Upon realizing I'm sensitive to dairy (which this WOE helped me to notice) I felt like a huge portion of food that add in flavor to what I am eating just went out the window and what I was left with was a lot of meat (which I can only do for so long before not wanting to touch it) and berries, eggs, nuts and certain veggies.

Being on a plateau makes it even more tiresome. I know it's water weight my body is holding for now but that doesn't change the lack of change. So the thought of doing this for the rest of my life was unappealing UNTIL I realized that should I not do this for the rest of my life (at least a modified version where I am in phase 4 - maintaining at some point), I'm going to end up right back where I started which is enjoying the food I eat and over indulging. For me, if I start focusing on how much I like different foods I'm eating, how yummy they are, that leads to overeating them eventually even if just occasionally - sooner or later the weight comes back.

Frankly, it doesn't matter if I use LC or some other kind of diet. Taking it off is never really a problem. Not falling back into the 'I love to eat' pattern is. The blessing is that I've discovered many foods that I'm sensitive to and though it's a bit of a downer to restrict them it's better for my body that I know to restrict them.

Yeah, I'm not going to LOVE this WOE and probably will eat more carbs than most people in this forum when I'm maintaining because I get tired of meat and eggs. I literally gag on them after a while and have to bump up my carbs or I go into a kind of anorexia where I just don't eat more than 500 calories. But it doing that makes staying at a healthy weight sustainable for me then I suppose that's the best option. The reality is that I enjoy eating quite a lot. Generally I can maintain pretty well but eventually (years in) I will gain at least a good 20 lbs back and have to start doing this all over again. If keeping better control over my food choices mitigates that so I don't do the rollercoaster thing or at least not as much of a roller coaster, then I think I'm better off for it. And I wonder if that is actually part of the point of this WOE? Ages ago much of what most people miss was not available and eating was done for survival rather than enjoyment though I have no doubt they did enjoy it when then were hungry and sat down to a fresh killed and cooked whatever. But that was a different enjoyment - one to satisfy hunger rather than satisfy taste buds.

It's a trade off. Do I want to eventually be maintaining with some better variety and somewhat enjoying that or do I want to eat whatever I want and have to keep revisiting having to diet to get off those extra 20-50 lbs I packed on while I was enjoying all I ate? Feels like I have to rethink what food, different foods, and eating means to me. Enjoyment of it (too much) seems to lead me right back here eventually. It may be years later - half a decade or so. When you have 'losing weight' down to a science, that might not be such a good thing.

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.

Thank you so much for such a well-written and thoughtful post. I quote you above because this part of your post resonated so much with me. Dr. Atkin's said "Who doesn't love steak?", but too much of a good thing is not a good thing. I have not seen anyone else on this site straightforwardly say what a lot of us must be thinking ("I literally gag") about eating LC long-term. I also find that some days I eat too few calories because I'm just so tired of the limited/repetitive choices. I'm afraid of going into "starvation mode", though, where the body tries to hang onto fat stores because it thinks there's a famine.

It is a finely-tuned thing to think of food as neither "mere fuel" nor "super delicious and the solution to all my problems". People with weight issues need to find their balance with food, and closely monitoring what we eat and making practical choices about food selection and portion, can only help on our life's journey.

It must be much more difficult for you to have to limit or exclude dairy -- eggs and cheese are such a big part of this WOE. Good luck to you!

I get the part about almost not eating at all... I got to the stage where a few olives, and a slice of salami and I was done for the day.... not good either..... but the only thing I can say is that I like the signature someone ( sorry ) has here...crowd out the bad food with the good. I'm using that to plan meals for my DB who is now diabetic.....

Khrussva! What an inspiring post! After 40 years of yo, yo dieting this really hit home for me. I am so sick and tired of gaining weight, all because I needed to have a cheat day or a cheat meal. The years, months, weeks, days and hours wasted, for what? To be right back to the same spot again and again. I'm sick of this...."lets try it again and maybe it will work this time". This time I will make it work!!!! I WILL get creative!!! I WILL be pain free ALL the time! I WILL push through the cravings. Thank you again for saying what I needed to hear!

I don't mean to put down this WOE. I just have some sort of thing where meat at some point makes me gag. I don't know why or what causes it but I've been like that most of my life. I trust it and wonder if it's my body saying 'enough' to the meat just how it told me enough with the other foods but I didn't always listen. I can have eggs. It's just certain processed dairy that my body seems to dislike. Some things in small quantities I can have as long as it's not many different things in small quantities because that makes one large quantity.

The alternative and solution for me was to bump up carbs and fats a bit. I have more of the carbs that are allowed in phase two (atkins) and have been between less than 20 to 35 g a day with no issues or not getting kicked out of ketosis.

I've learned that atkins is a good foundation for me but I need to pay attention to how I feel. I don't plan on being super strict LC for the rest of my life. I'm going to keep my carbs low-ish (probably under 100 when I'm maintaining) and avoid all the wheat, sugar, processed stuff. Thankfully, there are fats that I like which I can eat enough of to make up for the gag issue if I need to lower the protein. It's all about doing the best you can and learning what works for you.

Khrussva, I don't do off plan options. Actually there's a lot of on plan options I don't do too. I do a lot like you wrote, finding ways to work with what we can eat. Fat bombs - yep! Strawberries are my best friend right now. A HUGE treat for me. Sometimes some nuts really help. Stuff that is all within what I can have. Just gotta avoid the gag, which I have noticed for me might be related to water intake - like if I am leaning a bit toward dehydration or just not having enough water in me, I get the gag. Water doesn't always help. Food with a higher water content however does it seems. I think it's digestive related more than specific food related as I pay more attention to it.

From what I can tell, I get the gag when I've not gotten enough water or have recently lost a lot or when I'm very low on hydrating fruit and veggies. In fact, if I notice my appetite kicking up more than I am comfortable with and I want to reign it in the easiest and fastest way for me to do it on LC is cut down on high water carbs, bump fat/protein up, drink a little herbal tea and add some pork rinds for good measure. Within a day or two my appetite is gone. Poof! Sometimes I get the gag. Sometimes it takes a few days of that but it does seem to be specifically related to hydration for me personally.

Not sure if this has been brought up in the first 11 pages of this thread...but one thing that has helped me a lot are the two Wheatbelly Cookbooks.

Probably not as helpful for those still at 20 grams, but I started out closer to goal (currently 19 lbs away), and opted to start at around 40. I have been losing about a pound a week, which is fine...I'd lost 20 doing primarily grainfree and avoiding sugar, till my thyroid function took a dive, and I started mainlining dried fruit last winter.

It didn't take long to regain 12 of those hard lost pounds, and I finally realized that I needed to be accountable if I wanted to get back to where I was in my 40's.

I find that it's easy to make baked things with the almond and coconut flour, and tasty, too. My favorite are the peanut butter cookies. I break one up in a half cup of plain Greek yogurt for a dessert, and I'm in heaven.

There are lots and lots of paleo recipes out there, too. They tend to have a fair amount of honey. But if you substitute stevia or artificial sweetener in an equivalent amount, you can enjoy more variety without adding carbs.

To tell the truth, I probably will not go back to higher than about 75 grams, even at goal, and will avoid all grains for the rest of my life. There is too much data about the damage from what is, to us humans, an unnaturally high level of carbs, particularly grains, in the diet. As Dr Davis of Wheatbelly points out, the species that evolved eating grains have multiple stomachs, and we don't.

I think that he is so right and not to mention cows also re-chew their food several times before it is digested.