Alrighty, so I’ve entered the world of low carb eating – not gonna lie, at times it kinda sucks. I am a carb-aholic. When people ask me that question about if I am stranded on an island and I can only have one food so what would I pick, I pick bread.
If someone had suggested to me a couple months ago (or at any other point in my life) that I would go low carb I would have laughed in their face and told them to get lost and yet…here I am!
Enough whining about it though, not like going low carb is gonna kill me, if you believe some of the books I’ve been reading on the subject it might actually help me live longer…go figure! lol I am not going low carb for any kind of altruistic-my-body-is-a-temple kind of reason though, I am doing it cause I need to lose weight while being healthy and this is the best way to go about it.
If you are at your desired body composition you only need 100-150 grams of carbs per day, if you are looking to lose weight then the idea is to reach a “sweet spot” where carbs are reduced just enough that the body prefers to burn fats and a moderate amount of ketones instead of relying so much on glucose. For most of us that means eating 50-100 grams of carbs per day. Not a lot! You could eat up to 150 grams but then you’ll have to work harder to burn it off and if you’re lazy like me that just isn’t appealing at all. 😉 If you want to go crazy with it you can drop to 0-50 grams of carbs per day but that is only recommended for 1-2 days intermittently.
See, carbs control insulin and insulin controls fat storage, eat too many carbs you spike your insulin and your body stores more fat. blarg. Carbs are used as fuel not as structural components of the body – so we really don’t need as much of them as we think – sad huh?
(oh, fyi, I am not some food nutritionist or smartie pants about this, the info about the carbs came from the book The Primal Blueprint, written by Mark Sisson)
Basically I am eating a high fat (weird, right?), high protein, low carb diet…well, I’m trying to, I still mess up sometimes, shrug. I’ll get the hang of it eventually, I hope lol.
I no longer eat grains of any kind, this includes but is not limited to: bread, pasta, oatmeal, cereal, rice (of any colour), legumes, beans, corn, lentils, potatoes…the list goes on. I also stopped drinking milk (well, except for in my tea cause the almond milk I use now makes my tea taste weird so I cheat on that a teensy tiny bit, oops! lol). I don’t eat things from a can (like soup or fruit or veggies), I don’t eat pre-packaged foods (like Knorr Sidekicks, KD, um…pretty much everything you can think of that would be in a cupboard lol), I limit my chocolate (I’m not really supposed to eat it but come on, like I’m gonna realistically stop eating chocolate? I’m a girl!). I don’t really use condiments anymore…mostly because the foods I used to put them on I don’t eat anymore 😛 There are a lot of things I don’t eat anymore…
But!
It’s best to focus on what I can eat, right?
I eat fish, meat, poultry, eggs, various dairy products, veggies (fresh and some frozen), fruits (fresh and some frozen), the occasional serving of pistachios, the occasional tablespoon of peanut butter…um, yeah, that’s about it. The list of what I do eat is much shorter then what I don’t eat but when you think of all the different veggies out there, and all the different fruits, all the different dairy products, and all the different ways to cook fish and meat and poultry it’s easy to see I have a lot of variety to choose from. 😀
So sure, I’m not jumping up and down with excitement about going low carb, and yeah ok maybe I have been dreaming about eating toast with jam on it but sometimes in life we have to sacrifice if we want to achieve a certain goal. Remember that quote: If you want something you’ve never had you must do something you’ve never done. Or, To get to the rainbow you must first walk through the rain. Both quotes are right and since I’m aiming for a goal I’ve never aimed for before I am getting on board with the low carb program and hoping it’s gonna get me there. 😀
EDIT!
Dec 10/13
I followed this plan for quite a while, over half a year and got results from it. Unfortunately I was in a car accident, forbidden from doing any type of physical activity, got down about that, fell off the plan, and most if not all of the results I achieved went flying out the window in the months of recuperation. sigh. I keep thinking I should go back to this plan but it is very strict and while it did work I have not been able to bring myself to follow it again because of how strict it is. Personally, it is not a maintainable plan, not something I could do as a lifestyle, which means there will always come a time where I will stop following it – if I ever get back on it that is lol.
I went through a dragon boat season not following this style and missing it because the season before I was in much better shape, but for all that I wanted the results I couldn’t bring myself to put in the work this plan demands. I’m in the off season now and am following a version of it. I am supposed to be eating Paleo but decided to start with this old plan, which is an almost stricter form of Paleo then slowly evolve my eating to match a Paleo diet. I haven’t changed the plan to Paleo so I guess in a way I am following this super strict eating plan again, only I tricked myself in to it – and I have a bit more variation in my food this time around. I’m experimenting with fish etc, something I never did last time, and quite enjoying it!
For updates on how my new attempt is going click here, the link will take you to the new page I have going that is detailing day by day my experiences on the new challenge. 🙂
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 
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