Rededication

I've been cheating a lot.

It's something that crept up on me. It started by eating potatoes instead of wheat or corn or rice or oats. Potatoes were paleo, right? At least, more paleo than grains. So I'd have some potatoes with breakfast. Then it was fries with lunch, and then a baked potato with a dinner steak. Then, every once in a while, I'd have a coke (full HFCS). And since I had a coke yesterday, I might as well have one today, too, right? And then carb cravings would kick in.

I lost twenty pounds -- and probably much more than that in fat, since I've also doubled the amount of weight that I'm lifting -- before cheating took hold. In the last two months, I haven't lost any weight at all. My belt tightened up a little bit, but that's it.

Inspiration

A friend of mine recently started down the low-carb path. He's not eating paleo (yet) but he is eating very low carbs. The most carbs he gets is residual sugar in eggs or cheese. No potatoes, grains, or sugar. And he's been losing weight -- fast. He didn't have a lot of weight to lose, like I do, but it's still coming off. It's very inspiring to hear his stories.

And it makes me feel guilty for my own indulgences. I used to lose that kind of weight!

Rededication

So I hereby rededicate myself to eating not just paleo, but low-carb paleo. Down with the potatoes!

I know carbs feed on themselves; I feel it. It's obvious. Start the day with some sugar and it goes downhill from there. No more cokes, fries, potatoes, or corn chips. I can do without. And I want to do without.

The proof is in the doing. I'll keep you posted.

Cheating on Your Low Carb Diet

I cheated on Monday.

I have blogged about cheating before, but I had an insight after this episode that I hope will help anyone that's trying to switch to low carb and is having trouble with carb cravings.

I had a burger, fries, and a coke for lunch. Normally I drink tea when I eat out, but for some reason I grabbed a coke. I think I was jonesing for sugar somehow and just gave in.

And then my blood sugar crashed a couple hours later. The afternoon was horrid; I felt those cravings all afternoon. I felt weak and jittery, my concentration was wandering, and I felt hungry. I needed I had to consume something. When I drove home, I grabbed another energy drink -- this time just to settle my blood sugar. I knew what was going on, and figured that was probably the easiest way out of it.

After a great dinner and then a night sleeping, I felt much better by Tuesday. It was easy to get back on track for Tuesday lunch (soup, some bbq pork), Tuesday dinner (leftover bbq), and through Wednesday (burrito bowl minus the rice and beans, ie meat, cheese, and avocado; steak for dinner) without any of those carb cravings.

An overnight fast is the best time to break out of a carb cycle. I think the blood-sugar low a couple hours after a high-carb meal is the hardest, most challenging part of switching to low-carb. Once you make it past that, it's easier to stay low-carb. I suffered for a few hours on Monday afternoon, but the energy drink five hours after lunch settled me, dinner was relatively low-carb, and then the long fast after that was mostly while I was sleeping. So I went from carbs on Monday back to low-carb by leveraging that overnight fast. My blood sugar was more stable on Tuesday morning; I still felt like my blood sugar was a bit low, but it wasn't as distracting as it was the previous afternoon.

Some people do great quitting cold turkey but that wasn't me. Taking advantage of an overnight fast (ie what you normally do!) might be the start of a pattern for the easiest way to go from the high-carb Standard American Diet to a low-carb diet. Slowly add low-carb meals. Start with breakfast (either skip it or eat low carb) and don't cheat in the mornings. Then add in lunch, keep your afternoons on-diet, then dinner, and then you're set. If you give this a try, let me know in the comments how it goes.

Cheating and Carb Cravings

I had a full-sugar (aka non-Diet) energy drink on Tuesday morning, and by lunch my blood sugar had crashed. I was starving. It was much easier to see the effect that carbs have on me once I had them mostly removed from my diet. 52g of sugar is now more than I eat all day, so having it in one big shot in the morning was noticeable.

But after lunch (two burger patties, cheese, pickles, grilled onions), those cravings were gone. I haven't had another one since.

I think that I have been chugging energy drinks two years now. I thought of them as an afternoon pick-me-up, something to consume when I felt really drowsy in the afternoon. Now, tho, I look back and see it also as carb cravings. I needed carbs two hours after lunch, and caffeine was an excuse to get those carbs. I felt better after drinking them; heck, while drinking them. They worked. I thought it was the caffeine but now I see that it was the carbs.

But on Tuesday... it didn't taste good. I didn't really want to drink it; it felt more like habit than craving.

It was hard for me to get off carbs when I was cheating. Pasta here, an energy drink there, maybe a sandwhich for lunch. I threw away the bun with today's burger lunch and it wasn't even an issue. I didn't want it, I didn't feel like having it.

Cheating produces cheating. I've seen a good number of people report that they started into paleo foodways by doing Atkins, and the Atkins induction is a good way to do it: it's one of those harsh 2-week diets where you hate life the whole time because you're body is adapting. I think it's the best way to get over that hump.

I had a hard time stopping my cheating because every time I cheated produced incentive to cheat again. Then a couple days would pass, I'd read a new blog post, and think, "omg, this stuff is evil. I shouldn't be consuming fructose. I don't want liver disease!" And then I'd be good for a couple days -- til I had pasta with lunch, and then I wanted my energy drink again...

I'm not completely over the hump. I guess it's like any addiction; you don't really get cured. You just put the symptoms into remission, the cravings into slumber, and go one day at a time.