Holiday Meltdown

Happy Valentine's Day!

Yesterday was the first holiday since I started, and my carbs were WAY off (think 67 instead of 20). Ironically it wasn't from where I expected!

I carefully planned a special, low carb-friendly dinner (we made sushi without the rice) and even planned chocolate in my day! However, we splurged by having lunch out at Ikea as they had a meatball special on. I figured I would eat the meatballs and salad, and skip the sauce and the potatoes and that would keep me in good stead.

Lesson learned: always check your carbs ahead of time! The meatballs had 9 carbs in 6 measly little meatballs! I won't be doing that one again! Ironically, the cream sauce only has 3 carbs in 1/4 cup!

Oh well, lucky for me today is a new day and I am back on the wagon, going ahead full steam!

P.S. I also forgot to mention - when I weighed this week I lost the weight I gained last week, and am down another 0.2 kg. Yay me!

Bump in the Road

This week I hit my first real bump in the road. I ate out several times and struggled to figure out the carb count on things I was eating. I came home feeling like I had a poor sense of what I had actually consumed, and what that would mean to my carb count for the week.

When I weighed on Monday morning the truth was in the scale. I had my first gain, 1.1 kg. That's OK. I still weigh far less than I did a month ago, and I know that overall I am making much healthier choices.

This week I have cut back to 20 grams a carb a day again to make sure I am staying within what my body can handle, and choosing foods that I know are within my "safe" zone. It may mean I miss out on a few foods that I could eat, but the peace of knowing I am moving towards my goal is worth it.

My favourite mental reset is that my carb counter on my phone resets to the new day, with 0 carbs consumed and 0 glasses of water drunk, each night at midnight. It provides me the visual reminder that a fresh day has come and with it a fresh start.

How about you? How do you deal with your bumps in the road?

How to Make Bacon the Fast Way

I am very lucky to have a husband who makes me breakfast most mornings. That breakfast frequently includes bacon. As I am sure you can imagine, cooking bacon for five people can take a while, especially when balanced against the need to use the same pans for the eggs, too!

My brilliant husband has come up with a great solution! He lays out a couple packages of bacon on baking pans. Note: Make sure they have good sides. This is very important!!! Do NOT use cookie sheets with open edges or corners or you will have a bacon grease fire in your oven!

Anyways, he bakes the bacon in the oven until it is just done, then lets it cook and packs it between layers of parchment paper in a freezer container. Then, whenever we want bacon for breakfast, he just pulls out the right number of slices and gives them a quick cook in a fry pan to thaw and heat them. Breakfast the fast way!

Also, if you keep your bacon freezer container and paper permanently in the freezer, you can reuse the parchment paper and save on the environment at the same time!

Tips for Weighing In

When I started a few weeks ago, I had to guess my weight. We didn't have a scale as our last one had broken and I hadn't been able to find one that went high enough.

I am not sure exactly what my starting weight was, but I am guessing it to be right around 450 pounds, or 205 kg.

Just over a week into my new lifestyle my hubby found a scale that goes to 440 pounds on Best Buy so he ordered it for me. I was ecstatic and terrified when it arrived - ecstatic that I would finally be able to track my weight, but filled with trepidation that I might have been off on my starting weight and would still be too heavy for the scale.

I was filled with great relief when I stepped on the scale and got a reading of 193.4 kg.  That weight was after twelve days of Atkins.

I have since weighed twice more. My weight after three weeks is 186.4 kg. Still nasty, but I am moving the right direction. I also had the delight this week of having my BMI (body mass index) fall below 60.

Here are my tips for weighing in:
1) Always weigh the same time of day. It doesn't matter whether you choose morning or night but your weight changes over the course of a day so keeping your weigh time consistent helps you get a more accurate picture of what your weight is doing.
2) Weigh once a week. It is tempting to hop on the scale more often but small fluctuations in weight are normal, and we are more likely to end up playing mind games with ourselves.
3) Dress in the same type of clothing each time, or better yet, your birthday suit.
4) Weigh twice. I find this helpful as some scales can be really finicky, and if you don't stand on it properly, they can give a wrong weight. If I get two rather different weights, I step on the scale again.
5) If you use a manual scale, make sure it is set to zero before you climb on. You don't want to be adding pounds because your kids played with the scale!
6) If you are buying a new scale, I recommend digital. Digital scales make it easier to see small losses, something that gets to be very important when you hit plateaus or are close to your goal weight.
7) Track your weight on a graph. When the weight loss seems slow, that slow downward trend can add extra encouragement.

Have a great week and happy weighing!

Coping with Illness

I have a cold. Not a big deal, but it has certainly knocked me for a loop the past few days. I really have not felt like eating at all, and the few times I have felt like eating, it has been something completely inappropriate if I want to remain on Atkins.

My solution? Not eating! Although it worked I know it really wasn't a healthy choice for my body. How is it supposed to fight off this illness properly without nutrients, and especially the vitamins?

I have even found my water hard to drink as it tastes icky in my stuffed up head. However, that one at least I have found a solution for! I take a small wedge of lemon and squeeze it in my glass, and suddenly I have a refreshing lemon drink. So much easier to get down!

What foods and tricks have you found to help you weather illnesses?

How to Choose the Right Tools for Your Meals

Every job we do is easier if we have the right tools. When I started doing Atkins I was very diligent in my menu planning to make sure that I was going to be able to keep within my carb limit. However, menu planning is only the first step. Next, we must actually eat our food, and often we have very misguided ideas of what a portion really is.

I have found several handy tools that really help me make a difference:

1) Measuring cups and spoons - these sound boring, I know, but they are very effective in letting us see what a cup of lettuce or a tablespoon of dressing REALLY looks like, not just what I think it looks like.

2) Kitchen scale - I have found this to be an awesome help for those foods that are either hard to measure by size, or that it's hard to find the carb count listed by cups. I love my Starfrit Electronic Kitchen Scale, but any good scale will do. The features I found most important to have include:

a) digital display - much easier to get an accurate reading that scales with a needle

b) zero button - this button lets me put a plate or bowl on top to keep my scale clean and then reset the scale to zero so I can start weighing; it also lets me measure one ingredient then add another without having to empty my bowl between ingredients

c) ability to switch units - if you find carb counts for one thing in ounces and another in grams, it's nice not to have to do the math in your head

d) reasonably high total weigh ability - my scale holds 5 kg; I used to have one that only held 1 lb. and I remember I was forever maxing it out. What a pain!

3) The final tool I am sharing today is an app I found called Carb Diet. This great little app keeps track of my carbs, protein, fat, water, exercise, and weight. It also has a database of thousands of food items and hundreds of restaurants, plus it allows me to customize entries for other foods I buy and for recipes I make. This app has made keeping track of my food intake SO easy!

What tools have helped make your menu planning and food tracking easier?

Shrinking

One week in and I am feeling like I am making progress, as is my husband. Unfortunately we forgot to weigh and measure when we started so we don't have an accurate record of what we started at. Because of our size it is not immediately obvious that we have lost weight. However, my husband has proof-positive that he is already losing weight. He has had to tighten his belt two notches after just one week on Atkins.

Now I have finally done my measurements.
Here are my measurements one week in:
Bust 160 cm/ 63 in
Waist 168 cm/ 66 1/4 in
Hips 172 cm/ 68 in
Right Arm 49.5 cm/ 19.5 in
Right Thigh 83.5 cm/ 33 in

I think one of my first goals is to lose enough that I am able to weigh using the tape measure (which only goes to 60 inches) instead of a piece of string!

If you haven't measured yourself I encourage you to do it as soon as possible. Measurements can be a valuable way of letting us see how our bodies are changing even when the scale doesn't co-operate.

Refreshing Water

I know water is good for you and I am really good about drinking it, but you have to admit it can get boring after awhile.

A couple months ago I had a Pampered Chef party.  I loved their great Pampered Chef Citrus Press the consultant showed us. You insert a lemon or lime, hold it over your water, and you have an instant refreshing beverage. I found we could get out whole family a refreshing drink with just one half a lemon. Do remember to count your carbs, but they are low and so worth it!

How to Survive The First Few Days

Something I have learned is that surviving the first couple days of this program can be tough. My body feels incredibly hungry all the time, and I am constantly craving sugar.

After the last time I tried this program, I said that the key to success is surviving the first three days. After that, it will get easier!

Here are some of the things I did to help reduce hunger pangs and cravings:
1) Drink lots of water. It is much easier to fool my stomach if it constantly has something coming in, so continually sip lots of water. Drinking water does, of course, also have other health benefits.
2) Don't worry about the amount of food you are eating. I find the first few days I feel like I am constantly hungry and therefore frequently eating. Don't worry! You are at the beginning of a new journey. Your appetite WILL go down!
3) Preplan your meals. When you are hungry and feeling like you could eat the entire contents of your pantry, it is good to already know what you are going to eat. I also find it helpful to aim for a bit under my 20 grams of carbs so that I have space to add snacks as needed
4) Have appropriate snack foods available. I find it helpful to have some high protein foods available that can be grabbed in a hurry - cheese, hard-boiled eggs, lunch meat (make sure you get the sugar and nitrate free kind), canned tuna or salmon, smoked salmon, and so on.
5) Record what you have eaten right away. That way you can see how well you are doing. (I have faith in you!)
6) Eat something small every two to three hours. That way your blood sugar will stay more even.
7) Packing a brown bag lunch? Pack something extra that will keep if you don't need it, but can be eaten quickly if you find yourself still hungry. I am adding this tip because my poor husband ate his lunch yesterday and was still starving. He needed to have packed more protein and it was too late to do anything about it.
8) Make sure you are getting all your vegetables in. Not only do they have lots of vitamins, but they also have lots of fibre that will help keep you feeling full.

Keep busy and keep focused! You can do this!

10 Reasons I Am Getting Started

Most people start a new diet or lifestyle knowing exactly how many pounds they want to lose. I actually don't know. Though it's embarrassing to admit, I don't actually know what I weigh at the moment. I can guess but I do not know. I am presently so large that I can not find a scale that goes high enough. My doctor was not even sure where I could access one!

Therefore I am focusing on the bigger picture of WHY I am losing weight. I created my own list of reasons to lose weight:
1) To be healthier
2) To have more energy
3) To walk without pain
4) To be able to do activities with my children
5) To be able to buy clothing in a regular store
6) To sit comfortably in a chair with arms
7) So that my husband can hug me tightly enough to cross his arms behind me (in a bear hug)
8) To be able to volunteer more
9) To get in and out of the shower easily
10) To have more space in the car(especially behind the steering wheel)

That's my current list. Anyone else got a different reason?

Day One

I have been going to start for several months now, and finally got there today.
Although it may seem contradictory to wait so long, I am actually glad I did.
I spent many hours thinking about what I needed to do to succeed, and what I would need to give up. I weighed the two choices thoroughly and knew that I wanted the freedoms that come from losing weight enough that I am willing to pay the price.

The other reason it took me so long was menu planning. I have really been struggling with menu planning the past few months and I knew that I needed to have a good plan in place to succeed. By the time I got close to menu planning Christmas was here, and a good friend pointed out that trying to start something new amid all the Christmas temptations would be like asking to fail. I heeded her advice and waited. Yesterday I spent several hours menu planning, my husband made a trip to Costco, and today we have begun.

I am glad we put the extra effort into making a strong start. It felt good to get up today knowing what the day was going to look like. It was so much easier to deal with hunger pangs when I knew what the next meal was, as well as how many carbohydrates were left that could be put towards snacks.

Now it is almost bedtime and I sit here pleased with myself. I have eating 19 net carbs and drank 8 glasses of water. If I was in elementary school, I would definitely be getting a gold star on my chart today!

My New Life Begins...

I have spent most of my life battling with my weight. I was overweight as a child and through much of my teenage years. Ironically, looking back at the chart my mum gave me of my height and weight at different ages, I did go through one stage of being a normal BMI, but I was clumsy and had no self-esteem so I still felt absolutely huge. By the time I was old enough to face reality, my body had long since caught up with my perceptions.

Over the years I have tried many, many diets. Over the years I have failed just about as many. For some reason my body resists losing weight. I lose thirty to thirty five pounds, then stop and regain. No matter what I change, how much I weigh and measure food, and how much exercise I do, the scale moves no further. Agonizingly frustrating. However, the worst part was that I would feel terrible throughout it - lightheaded, dizzy, tired.

The only program I have ever had success with was Atkins. I have tried it twice, for three months at a time, and both times I lost fifty pounds. More significantly, I felt great doing it. Both times I suffered the same downfall, coming off it for a vacation away then struggling to get back on the bandwagon. I have realized that I need to let go of the feeling of deprivation and embrace the feelings of good health and success. Sounds good, doesn't it? That's because I am only on day one! We will see what happens when push comes to shove.

I am writing this blog to keep myself accountable in my journey, and in the hopes that those of you who ride along with me will learn something that helps you in your own journey.