3 Days Down

I am 3 days into my new low-carb, no sugar lifestyle and I have to say it's going pretty well so far. It's definitely not as difficult as I thought it would be to give up sodas and between-meal snacks, and it's possible to make a semi-low-carb meal almost anywhere. Case in point, last night I needed a quick meal on the way to an event after work, so I grabbed two Whoppers (buy one get one free) and a salad from Burger King. I put the patties/internals together so I only ate 1 bun total, and ended up with a meal under 60 carbs and less than seven bucks. Obviously not ideal, but much better than the typical nearly-200 carb meals I would have been eating from fast food restaurants a week ago.

Some decisions are a little more painful than others, like walking into the break room this morning with big Cranberry Orange Muffins set out for anybody, and walking out without one. As a result of this decision (which weighed a little more heavily on me than I want to admit), I created a spreadsheet called "Crap I Didn't Eat." The idea is to keep track of all the junk food and soda I would have normally eaten, but decided to skip due to my new eating habits. I put each "pass" in the left column and the total carbs I avoided on the right, and add them all up. The result is pretty encouraging, and helps me get a "reward" instead for making smart choices, because each entry in the spreadsheet is a measurable "victory." The total carbs avoided is pretty eye-opening too. Adding up the total carbs from the donuts, muffins, candy, and soda that I didn't eat (but would have!), I resisted over 600 carbs in 3 days. For a low-carb diet that aims to eat less than or around 100 carbs a day, 600 carbs in 3 days is pretty huge by comparison. And that is mostly carbs that I would have eaten ON TOP OF pasta, bread, fried food, and other high-carb meal options that I have been avoiding as well. I haven't run the numbers on what I actually am eating yet, but I figure it's at least a third of the carbs I would usually eat, and way less than what I would eat on a "bad" day.

So why am I focusing so much on low-carb rather than calories or other diet options? I still haven't really gone into detail on that yet. I know there is a lot of controversy on the subject, but I have some inside sources that have encouraged me to at least give this a shot.

So far the results seem pretty good; I feel fine and other than making some difficult decisions to not eat total crap when it is available, eating this way seems easily sustainable. In addition, it seems a good deal cheaper since I am saving $2 or so on soda at every meal. Also, and perhaps more immediately relevant, is the fact that I seem to have lost about 3 pounds since weighing myself a few days ago. I'm curious to see what my total weight change is after the full week, but things are definitely headed in the right direction.