suzyness.com

I haven’t posted about my diet efforts recently simply because they haven’t been all that exciting. I’ve managed to maintain about an 8 pound loss, but not from low carb. My body rebels when trying to lose weight with too few carbs. I know the low carb approach works well for many. Ben has had great success from it. For me, though, I’ve discovered that I had the best results by adding a moderate amount of healthy (read: unrefined/complex) carbs back in to my diet. Oh how I’ve missed you, brown rice and whole wheat bread.

Yes, despite the low carb success stories I hear of all too often, I’m just not destined to be one of them. Which, actually, works just fine for me. Aside from the fact that consuming moderate, healthy carbs is easier in most dining situations, it’s also darn tasty!

So, here’s what I’m doing now…

1. Removing refined/simple carbs where I can. Mostly focusing on fewer “white” things (breads, pastas, rice, sugar).

2. Eating lots of veggies. Prepared all ways. Trying to include them at every meal. Basically shooting for 50% of my plate to be veggies.

3. Eating whole grains when I feel like it. I haven’t had them at every meal, but I haven’t avoided them either. I occasionally have whole grain toast with breakfast. Sometimes I have brown rice with lunch. Dinners are generally low carb, since Ben is still following a low carb plan.

4. Alternating between high calorie and low calorie days. This one seems to be the lynch pin for my weight loss. It’s helping create a lower overall calorie intake, but the key (for me) is that it doesn’t work without some carbs. I should be better about following this one, because that’s when I see great progress in my weight loss, but it means tracking foods, which is just a pain most of the time. It’s possible to do it by just keeping a mental tally, but I’m always surprised at how quickly calories add up when I actually write them down.

5. Exercise. Yup, the dreaded E word. It doesn’t really seem to impact my weight much, but it should be happening anyway, so I might so well add it in to this plan. The exercise bike works well for this… especially since it’s pointed at the tv. :)

6. Following this plan 90% of the time, because, really, life just can’t revolve around what you can or can’t eat. Special occasions means a splurge here and there. Changing my attitude to be ok with not sticking strictly to a “diet”, persay. These spluges just go on my high calorie days and I make up for it the next day.

So, here’s the thing with following the plan above… it’s really helped with my overall mood and stress level, too. I’ve known for years that carbs (especially sugar) really affect my anxiety levels. During periods of high stress at work, too much sugar caused panic attacks for me (where it felt like my heart was doing little flips in my chest). Cutting back on carbs helped tremendously, but I’m surprised that adding complex carbs back in seems to help even more. It seems counter intuitive, but I guess it makes sense. They have a slower release in to the blood stream and don’t affect insulin the same way that processed carbs do.

It amazes me how much foods can affect mood and temperment. It’s something to stash away for when C acts up… looking at what she’s had to eat recently.

Well, as much as I hate to admit it, I’ve been cheating on my low carb diet the past few days. Not too terribly, but I’ve had a few servings of fruit and some pasta.

Yesterday, an apple on the counter was calling to me, so I went for it. C was happy to help consume the evidence and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Then, I helped C with part most all of her single serving mac and cheese. Today, I gave in when a free smoothie was up for grabs – rationalizing that it was mainly for C, but happily downing it when she didn’t. It was green and had collard greens in it, but the base was definitely fruity.

Given my weight loss plateau over the past 7 weeks, I’ve been toying with changing it up again and going towards more of a south beach diet approach, adding fruits and whole grains back in. At this point, I’m just really frustrated with the lack of results and wanting to do something that will help get things going again. I’ve seen the same 7 lbs come and go every week, currently holding around a 3 lb total loss. It’s incredibly discouraging to see Ben losing weight from this approach while I stagnate.

I didn’t go to zumba, so I’m sitting on the exercise bike tonight to burn a few calories. It’s a rather passive activity, which makes it easy. I watch tv or blog (or both) and the time just flies by. The hardest part is showering after!

We spent the day at Art Beast where C had a great time banging on drums, painting some art work, scooping shells, playing with sand and running amuck. It was so much fun! We followed that adventure with a visit to a vegan cafe down the street. We were hoping to get some tea from the tea house that used to be next door, but we were disappointed to see that it was closed down. I guess tea shops just don’t survive a recession well.

Alright, shower time. Good night internet!

I missed updating yesterday, but I was down a pound yesterday morning, and another 1.6 lbs this morning. That brings total loss to 6.7 lbs – right back to where I was the day before we left for vacation.

I think I’ve learned a few things over the past week… one being that the occasional cheat doesn’t seem to derail me too much. The other is that I seem to do better with a little bit of fat in my diet. Dukan prescribed a very low-fat (as close to nonfat as possible) diet, but adding some fat back in seemed to get my diet moving again.

I made some delicious cream puffs today. I was inspired by this recipe, but modified it for the ingredients I had at home. I took a oopsie, cut it in half, filled them with some whipped cream (heavy whipping cream, steviva & vanilla) and topped them with a chocolate concoction.

Chocolate sauce:

2 Tbsp heavy whipping cream

2 Tbsp butter (melted)

1 Tbsp cocoa powder

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 tsp steviva (or other sweetener)

Mix ingredients, microwave for 30 seconds, mix again. Pour over oopsie cream puff and enjoy!

Tomorrow is a brewfest, so we’ll be trying lots of different kinds of beers… which… are definitely NOT low carb. So I guess we’ll be testing out another cheat day tomorrow. I think the trick for me is not going too crazy on cheat days so I’m not spending a lot of energy the next week trying to get back to where I was the week before.