Getting Things Under Control

I ate too much over the holidays - and didn't stop when the holidays were over. But homeostasis - my body's set point - resisted gaining the weight until mid-January. Finally, my indulgences caught up with me and I hit my highest weight in a couple of years.

Ding Ding Ding!  The alarm bells rang!

So back under control, which means following strict rules for a few weeks. I'm going to what has always worked for me so far - Atkins. I started a week ago last Tuesday (Jan. 21) - the day after my house guests departed. I had planned for this - happily postponing the work and the sometimes unpleasant beginning of the diet.  My guests left mid-day Monday, and since I was not at work I was able to lay in supplies and prepare for my back to work scramble.

As is my wont, I read some books. My two go-two books are the Beck Diet Solution which got me started back in 2010, and of course The New Atkins for a New You.  The Beck book is really a workbook of how to think about eating, and it has definitely helped me shape a new relationship with food. This Atkins isn't terribly different from the original Atkins, except it emphasizes vegetables more. But, like all these books, it has to start out with the science of how your body processes food and therefore why their way of eating is better. And, since it is part of the much-reviled Atkins approach, it has to justify why their approach to eating is not dangerous. The problem with re-reading these books is I've read them so much, they don't hold my attention. I think I know what they say and so I put them aside and just eat.  The problem right now is I need some rules on eating.

So for a change of pace, I got The New Atkins Made Easy.  This book pretty much covers exactly the same thing as far as eating rules as the more official book. It skips all the science, and in different words, tells you what to eat when. (And every rule is the same, just different style.) I needed different words to hold my interest, and the plain talk is great. The big point that is hammered into the first few chapters is:  VEGETABLES.  Not focussed on meat, butter, and eggs, as Atkins is rumored to be. Design every meal around greens. This book stresses the minimum amount of vegetables to eat each day, rather than talking about limiting carbs.  Yes, you have to limit carbs. No grains, no potatoes, no sugar, no beans, limited dairy at this stage. No fruit at this stage, which is the hardest right now. But eat your vegetables and you won't miss the carbs. Proteins are also subject ot portion control. Four or five ounces of meat per meal, max, (no pounds of ribeye), and average no more than an egg a day. No yogurt till later, but small amounts of sour cream are ok.  But eat your vegetables first!

So now here is a typical day:  Breakfast is eaten in the car while driving: no-carb chicken sausages wrapped in lettuce leaves to be finger food.  Usually each wrap is a single romaine leaf torn off the heart-of-romaine head.  There is my first cup of leafy greens. Lunch is a huge salad from the salad bar are work- spinach, lettuce, red onions, cucumber, mushrooms, (at least 3 cups) with my own salad dressing (so I know it has no sugar) and five ounces of meat from home. (I bring my own meat mostly because I care about farming practices used on animals).  An afternoon snack turns out to be crucial in giving me the energy to do dinner right. It's been a couple of celery stalks with hard salami, or just plain guacamole, or olives. (I'll add nuts next week, but want to keep the green vegetable side as well.)  Dinner on a week night is heating up something made in advance - roast chicken or grilled steak, with a couple of cups of cooked vegetables - broccilli or cauliflower or asparagus.  I've kept my evenings busy, so I can't reach for the sweets. This is my weakest time of day, and pretty much celery or a piece of cheese has worked for a bed time snack. It's also worked to not have a snack at all. I cook with olive oil and butter, and last weekend ate a bunch of bacon, but really, doesn't this look relatively healthy by almost anyone's standards?

I'm tracking my food in My Fitness Pal, and so I can say with confidence eleven days into this I've averaged 1300 calories a day, and hit the 20 "net" grams of carbs exactly on average. (Net carbs are total carbohydrate grams minus fiber grams, in my case that works out to 30 total carb grams and 10 fiber grams, so about a third of my carbs are fiber. More fiber would be good, but hard to find a food that isn't sawdust yet has more grams of fiber than other carbs.)  If you don't make your own food from scratch, it's very hard to make these targets. Bottled salad dressings, fruit condiments in salads, bread crumbs on cooked vegetables, all of these things add carbs. Meat and green vegetables, with oil and butter and vinegar is the only way to make sure there isn't corn starch in the gravy.

So I'm having terrific success in terms of what I see on the scale.

So the weight I saw on the scale two weeks ago, that went "ding ding ding" was six pounds more than today's weight!  Atkins says the first 4-6 pounds in the first two weeks are water, and then your body concolidates and starts losing fat.

We'll see. I've seen in the last five years that I can do this well for 2-4 weeks, and then I'm bored and want chocolate.  But it's also sustaining the effort to make food myself that derails me. For lunch, I can't stop at the food trucks for a sandwich (or even a curry since I don't know what's in the sauce). I've decided to buy step-saving foods, like cut up celery or romaine hearts. Eating off the salad bar at work is a huge convenience and almost totally eliminates any excuses there. One day I truly did not have time to go to the second floor and buy my greens, and so I just ate my meat for lunch, my celery and salami for snack, and ate more veggies at dinner. Another morning I was disrupted by teen schedules, but I was able to grab my meat and breakfast and stay on track when I got to work late.  But it is certainly a friggin' lot of planning and work.

Typically, there is a loss of energy a few days in, and a recovery a few days after this. I've had that "Atkins flu" very badly other times. To try to avoid it, I followed their advice and ate a teaspoon of salt (fleur de sel) for each of the first five days. I really didn't have the issues this time I've had other times. Today I started training for a 5K in March, so I can confirm the energy is back.

So I'm aiming to keep up this very restricted eating until President's day, then consider adding some carbs back. We'll see. I think I'm doing better at the planning and management this time around, and I pat myself on the back for not letting work or teens derail me in the first ten days.

Excelsior!