Low-Carbing It

Hello hello! Happy new year. I've been meaning to write here but I have an outlet where I write every day and spew all my crap, because honestly there has been a lot that I don't want to subject you to all the time. It's a place where I more or less stream of consciousness it totally, meaning no judgement, no filter, just getting down my thoughts in physical form. It's been really wonderful, and something I have been doing consistently on a daily basis since October. It's been good for my soul and good for my writing chops – even if I am not writing anything even close to publishing-worthy, it's a good practice and brain-dumping is a big favorite way of mine to calm myself down and gain perspective. I use a paid site ($5 a month) called 750words.com where the object is to write at least 750 words each day. You can join monthly challenges for more motivation, but the thing I like about most is that is a place where no one else will read what you write, ever. You can also download your entries to do with what you want. You might wonder why I would pay to write somewhere when I could just do the same thing in my Google Drive or just a plain old Word Doc? I considered it, but realized that what keeps me in the habit is the notion of a streak – it tracks how many days in a row you write, and it keeps all sorts of data for you, including words per entry and words total. For instance, I am very close to having written 100,000 words since October! I'm not sure I could done that on my own.

So anyway, I've been busy writing, including my thoughts about losing weight and all the stuff I generally write about around here, but letting myself be even more whiny than I would allow here. I edit my writing much more, whereas at 750words I am just totally unfettered. It's a nice place to be able to go to.

Lots has happened since I last wrote. As you may remember, I had found myself back in the groove and was doing pretty well,  feeling good about things. Then somehow – and maybe it was being on vacation for eleven days – I just kind of lost it and ended up this past Tuesday finding myself up to 330 pounds. Truly horrifying.

The good news is that this past week was also the start of a 12-week weight loss study I am participating in. Just in time, too –  I needed some sort of structure to rein myself in. Also, it is something that is bigger than me. I want to follow their guidelines so that they get accurate data, and honestly I feel like my brain did a total 180 because they way I am relating to food has completely changed since Tuesday. It's something that I have not quite experienced before in all my experiences with this stuff.

Originally I had signed up for a depression and anxiety study with 23andMe for which I would get a free genetic report including ancestry information, the thing that I was most interested in. (Turns out that I am exactly what I thought I was – a little more than half Irish, and half German and literally nothing else.) A few weeks ago, they offered the chance to be part of weight loss study which I jumped on immediately. Participants could choose from a few different options, and knowing how well my body seems to respond to it, I went for the low-carb option. I'm also supposed to be more active, another thing I am working on anyway.

For the study, they make general suggestions on what to eat rather than say, "Eat only 50g of carbs each day." So I am looking at focusing on mostly eating lean proteins and non-starchy veggies with limited amounts of red meat, grains (1 serving a day), and fruit (1 serving a day). Of course as you would imagine NO things like cakes, cookies, and candy (though they put it this way: Try to avoid these foods), but offer snack ideas like cheese, avocado, 70% dark chocolate, nuts.

I am keeping these guidelines in mind but also taking it a step further and actually tracking my carbs, if for no other reason to find out how many net carbs all the foods have. I like to know these things!
I'm starting off with just under 100g per day, but want to take it down to 50–75 in the coming week. I'm still kind of working things out in my pantry and figuring out meals and things.

I am happy to say that since Tuesday I have lost nine pounds!

This, of course is not usual, and I know that it won't continue falling off like that in the coming weeks. But it is really nice to be able to get this kind of result early on as a motivator. I've been struggling in the mid-low 320s for quite a while and I just couldn't get myself beyond that; even worse that I was starting to gain again. I weighed in at 321.6 this morning, a number I haven't seen since mid-November. Very pleased about that!

It turns out that one of the most surprising things is I am responding well to is having some limitations. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of what I am going to eat for any given meal, for instance. I've known for a long time that I had a serious problem with sugary and white carby-stuff, and I also know the damage those foods can do to your system and it seems silly to me now that I just kept on and kept on eating way too much of them anyway and all it was doing was making me feel awful. My body deserves much better than that. I say this all the time – I want to grow older as a healthy, vibrant person who can climb mountains as an 80-year-old. Or something like that. You get the idea.

I have had a small bit of white carbs since Tuesday (pasta with the meatballs I made yesterday, and ate some, but much less than I ever had in the past, and fitting them into the overall carb count. I haven't had cravings for sweets like I usually do, so this whole thing has been, dare I say, easy? There are times when I get a little hungry, but I am practicing being with the hunger and knowing that I've had adequate nutrition each day (my meditation practice helps with this a lot).

That is not to say that I never think about things that are pretty much off the list, but when I do I tend to turn that thought over to they are basically poison in my system and I don't really want them after all. The idea of giving my body food that it needs and will flourish when fueled with it is really appealing. I want to lose weight, yes, but I also want to take good care of myself. As much as I can muster. That is the priority.

I'm doing my best not to get too enthused so early on. I know myself. But I will enjoy how things are going so far, and continuing to do my best to keep it going.