"But I heard..."

This happens to me a lot: I tell a group of people I'm doing a low-carb diet, and suddenly I'm fielding a barrage of rumors and hearsay. "Isn't all that protein bad for your kidneys?" "I've heard X Y Z" "Didn't a study just show it doesn't work?" and so on. The truth is nutrition science is a mess. Trying to figure out anything for absolute certain is an exercise in futility, and quietly sponsored studies from one side or another pop up in the news on a weekly basis. There is good science out there, but one could easily align with any select group of data to self-assure themselves of their position.

All I REALLY know is my own personal experience, which is why I started this blog in the first place. I had heard so many conflicting things that I figured the only way to really figure out the truth was to try it myself. My personal, completely non-professional and unverified results? Low-carb living is awesome! I lost a ton of weight, never went hungry, and felt great. I didn't do any of the scientific stuff like getting my cholesterol checked before and after, so I can't say for certain that I suffered no ill effects, but as far as I can tell I am just fine.

That is why, to me, it doesn't really matter what people think or what they repeat from an article about a study they read the headline of. I've been through it personally, and I felt like it was a positive experience that accomplished my goals and is worth doing again.

I updated the weight tracker on the right. You can see how long it's been since I weighed myself, which is itself a statement about how I just stopped paying attention.

Currently I'm at 260, which isn't my highest ever, but is still much higher than I'm comfortable with. Hopefully over the next couple months I can generate a similar down-slope as last year.

This is the beginning of day 3 for me and it's not so bad. I was a little fatigued yesterday afternoon and I was fighting the urge to snack all last night, but thanks to some frozen strawberries I pulled through.

Berries are actually really great in terms of taste-vs-sugar content. Many fruits tend to be chock full of sugar, but berries skew toward the low end of that scale. You can grab a couple berries when you are feeling snacky to satisfy the urge with minimal carb intake.

Let's try this again

So a year and a half ago, I hit my lowest weight in a long time - 235! At that point, I felt much more comfortable with my weight and had a nice sense of satisfaction after hitting my goal. Unfortunately, along with those feelings came something not so great - complacency. I started relaxing my dietary restrictions, began enjoying snacks and junk food a little more than "occasionally," and slowly worked my way back up to where I started. A year and a half later, I'm pretty much back to my starting weight when I turned 30. I'm not happy about it, but it's nice that it took me so much longer to gain the weight back than lose it.

So here I am back up to 265-ish, feeling fat, lazy, achey, and all those crappy things that overweight, out of shape people feel. My diet has devolved into a mix between binge-eating and self destruction. The worse part is that I *know* how bad I am eating now, and exactly what I would need to do to lose weight again. I am completely aware of how much sugar and junk I am eating all the time, but without motivation I just have no willpower. So let's create some motivation.

I'm doing it all over again. My low-carb diet lost me almost 40 pounds last time I tried it, so let's stick with that. My goal is less than 100 carbs a day, but I'm really going to make an effort to minimize that (50 or less). With a hard limit of 100 carbs, it was easy to justify late day snacks - "I have only eaten 70 today, and each of these cookies are 12 carbs, so I can afford 2!" - but this time I am going to stay as low as possible each day. I also want to place a larger emphasis on greens - fresh and raw spinach, broccoli, asparagus, and my new friend kale. My goal is not just to lose weight, but to eat healthier too (you would think these would go hand-in-hand, but it's possible to lose weight in unhealthy ways).

I'm actually on day 2 right now. Yesterday was great, I actually ate less than 40 carbs for the whole day. Today I have already had about as much just with lunch (mostly thanks to a sweetened yogurt I had), but I should be able to keep dinner low. One thing I am not looking forward to is the blood-sugar switch and the fatigue and headaches that come with it. I read back through my first couple blogs where I talk about that some, and it doesn't sound as bad as I remember (it's nice being able to motivate myself with my own past experiences). Hopefully by keeping my carb counts very low, I can sort of "power through" those problems. I have a feeling this first week or 2 is going to suck though simply because of how bad I have been eating.

I'm going to try to get new charts and numbers posted ASAP so I can track my changes.