Anyone who has followed a low calorie diet, then compared it
to a low carb diet will notice that low calorie doesn’t always equal low carb
and vice versa. I can attest that just counting calories and following a low
calorie diet will not always work and often leaves you hungry as well as
frustrated and unhappy. I was never a
huge overeater although I probably ate a little more than my body needed. If I went on a strict 1000 calorie diet, I
could lose weight, but I was often hungry.
It’s also not easy to maintain and it is depressing to think you can’t
enjoy any of the foods that you really love.
What’s the point in life if you can’t enjoy it? So you slip off and eventually revert back.
I think people need
to find out how their body processes food, how much of it and what kinds. I went on a low carb diet for the first time
when I was just out of high school and lost a lot of weight that I kept off for
about six years before it began creeping back as my diet slipped back to old
habits and I was exercising less. The
same pattern repeated when I went on a low calorie diet and I kept the weight
off again for several years, before the pounds returned with friends. In between, I’d had success with several
other diet options, but none of them a plan for life.
When I went on Atkins this time, I noticed that the plan had
changed its approach. Instead of 40
carbs to begin, the diet was now talking net carbs, which are the carbs that
your body actually uses of what you consume.
Two weeks at 20 net carbs to start, then you gradually add carbs until
you stop losing weight, drop a few carbs back and that’s what you eat to
continue to lose. Then you go back up to
the stall amount and you’re at the carbs you actually burn. Makes sense.
Along the way, you audition food to see which foods may stall your diet
and which seem to help. Starch and sugars
are really the culprits and since this helps you limit them, it also makes a
low carb diet a good choice for diabetics or anyone who needs to control their
blood sugar.
Well, it didn’t take long for me to figure out that the max
number of net carbs I could eat and not gain weight was about 23 a day. Not a happy number for me. So, 20 carbs was my ideal for losing weight
and that means a fairly slow weight loss.
Over the past year and a half, I’ve lost 76 pounds (as of August 10,
2012). Considering that I am not a
really active person, that’s not bad. I
am retired and I don’t do a lot of exercising, so I am thinking that if I can
establish some kind of regular exercise program, I might be able to up the
carbs a little.
Now, when I say 20 carbs a day, that might cause a panic,
but again, this is net carbs – carbs that my body actually uses. All the rest are pass through and there are a
lot of those. Still, on average, I eat
about 40 to 65 carbs a day. But when you
consider all the things you can eat that have little or no carbs in them, like
many meats, cheese, eggs, and some vegetables, then you see that the majority
of your carbs can be spent on vegetables and fruits with lower carb counts and
reduced-carb food items.
All of these new products with reduced carbs and protected
carbs, such as Dreamfield pasta, makes it possible to eat delicious food you
love and still stay within your low carb lifestyle. And I think that will be the key to not
gaining the weight back this time. If
you can have delicious and “legal” food, then you’re less likely to
wander.
Which brings me to one of the reasons I decided to blog my
recipes and my stories. If I put it out
there, I hope it will help to keep me on course over the years and will
encourage others to do the same. I just
wish I’d known how my body handled food earlier in my life and that the food
substitutes had been as plentiful as they are now.
So, if you want to give a low carb lifestyle a try, then maybe the recipes and stories I'll be putting on this blog will help you along.
