I filled you guys in on what I have been doing workout wise last week on the blog so this week I wanted to talk about my personal journey with eating. I don't like calling it a "diet" as I don't plan on ever stopping. I don't believe in diets... for me they have just NEVER worked. It is only when I fully change how I eat that I've had any success. I've had a life long battle with eating which I'll share one day but today I just want to focus on what has been working for me the last six months.
While we were on the cruise ship in May coming home from Alaska I was stuffing my face with french fries while thinking, "I've got to make a drastic change in my diet." Those fries were good but I just kept thinking I need to cut down on carbs and sugar. So, I decided that when we got back I was going to do a Low Carb diet in order to shock my body into something it wasn't used too. I started reading a bit about it online -- what exactly is considered "low carb"-- what isn't etc. etc. It was a lot of different information coming from tons of different sources and instead of picking a plan like Adkins I decided I was going to do this myself with my own rules. Low carb is generally considered 100 grams of Carbs or less a day. However, that seemed like too many for me and I REALLY wanted to remove most carbs from my diet - so I chose to try and stay under 30 grams a day. The only time I got any carbs was from fruits and veggies. Some people choose to remove those completely and not eat any carbs but I just didn't feel that was doable OR healthy for me. Just because fruit has sugar in it carbs are there but those aren't the same kind of carbs that come in white bread. It's different and I was okay with eating those kinds of carbs in moderation.
Another part of my plan was to have one cheat day a month until I lost all the weight that I wanted to and then if I liked this style of eating I would gradually transition to a cheat meal once every two weeks or maybe even once a week instead of full days. Cheat days seemed so exciting and guilt free and a nice reward to giving up french fries for an entire month. You work hard for 30 Days and then you get to celebrate what you've done - sounds good to me. So, that's what I started doing on June 1st 2014 and I'm still doing it now, six months later. I realized it had been six months the other day when I was talking to Chad and I almost started crying because I have never been able to stick to something like this before for this amount of time. I am so proud of myself. I feel amazing and it all started with me aiming to make it just one month.
Now, the good stuff. Let me just tell you about how CRAZY the first month was! I am 100% convinced now that SUGAR is a drug. I'd put the addiction level up there with heroin and I'm not joking. The only way I made it through the first three weeks was pure determination. I literally had dreams about food during the first three weeks almost nightly. I had mood swings, I was exhausted, and I had no energy in my workouts. It was so hard but I just knew that it HAD to get better. I was googling articles - searching for other people going through the same thing and I found what I was looking for. All of those symptoms I had were normal. That was my body detoxing from sugar and also switching from getting my energy from carbs (which I no longer ate) to using fat as energy. There's just a REALLY crappy 3-4 week time frame where this happens and everything sucks. I tell everyone that is thinking about doing low-carb this because it's important and it's not easy BUT the good news is that after 3 weeks I started to feel amazing. The dreams about my mom feeding me froyo with oreos and cookie dough stopped. I didn't wake up in a cold sweat because I was just dreaming about eating Cheetos and licking that orangey cheesy goodness off my fingers anymore; nor, did I dream about eating fluffy, buttery, soft, country biscuits again. I started to have energy in my workouts and the cravings WENT AWAY for the most part. Then I got on the scale. I didn't weigh for the first 2 1/2 weeks and I was DYING to see if this new way of life was going to work. I got on the scale and I had lost almost 10lbs. I was hooked - and NOT on sugar anymore!
Then it was time for Cheat day. I was so excited yet so nervous about this day because a big part of me worried I would just continue the cheat day and fall back into old habits. I didn't want to do that and I just made up my mind I wouldn't let myself. That hasn't always worked in the past but for some reason I'm at a point in my life where I have the dedication and motivation to stick to a plan. I think for me, if I acknowledge what could go wrong and then make a plan to AVOID that outcome happening I can then be successful. That pretty much goes for anything in life not just weight loss. Anyways, when cheat day came around I wanted a doughnut like crazy so Chad made plans to go get us some for breakfast. I was so excited to eat that doughnut but when I took my first bite I almost had a heart attack. Not really but WHOA sugar overload! I dare anyone to give up sugar completely for one month and then eat something entirely made up of sugar - it will be too much to handle. It tasted okay but after about three bites I was done. I didn't want it - it was too sweet and the sugar just wasn't something I was wanting anymore. I did however, want pizza, fries and chips so obviously my issue just lays with bread. Bread is still my favorite but after months of not eating it anytime I have a cheat day I really can't eat a lot of it because it makes me so full. It's so interesting the longer that I do this the more I can tell what works good in this body and what doesn't. Low-carb isn't for everyone and I strongly believe that you have to find what will work for YOUR body. Everyone is different but for me low-carb has changed my life and it is working. I faced my fear about not getting back on track but it was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be. It was still hard to resist carbs but I had so much determination that I got right back on track and so far I've had 5 Cheat days now with no issues. Just make sure you pack up any leftovers and send them to work with your husband or that you dump soap into the jar of frosting so you won't be tempted to dig it out of the trash and eat just a little bit more of it.
So, after six months of low-carbing it and kickboxing I am officially down 37 pounds. I weighed this weekend and I saw a number on the scale that I've never seen in my adult life. I'm smaller than I was when I met Chad and even smaller than I was when I walked down the aisle to marry him. I have never felt better in my entire life but I still have so much more work to do. The next goal for me is to lose 3 more pounds before we move. I want to be able to say I've lost 40+ pounds so badly... then the next goal will be 50 lost and so on and so forth. Baby steps... baby goals... with the knowledge that this is a LONG process and this isn't a diet - it's a change of life. I honestly have no desire to eat carbs regularly ever again. I do look forward to the days of a cheat meal once a week but I'm not there yet and that's okay. If you're looking for a way to jump start your weight loss or an entire lifestyle change I would strongly suggest going low-carb but then again it might not work for you. You just have to keep trying different things until you find something that works. Don't give up... I've tried so many things, given up so many times, and then tried some more. Give whatever you're doing a month of full commitment - focus in on what you want and let nothing get in your way. There was one point where I thought, "I guess I'm just always going to be fat" but I no longer accept that. I know that I can do whatever the hell I put my mind to and while it might take years - if you never stop trying you will never fail and you WILL eventually get to your goal. Make sure to love yourself along the way too. I was the meanest person to myself for so many years... not anymore. I LOVE myself.. I am proud of myself... and that love has fed my soul throughout this journey on those days when I wanted to call myself a failure.
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