Righting The Ship! (or Let's Geek Out and Lose Weight, People)

You have to see what's happening before you can get to fixing the problem, right? Right. So the last time I weighed in I had just completed 28 (28!) very low carb days, eschewing diet sodas, carby veggies, all grains, etc. I had only a few alcoholic drinks during those four weeks. After completing those 4 weeks I was happy that I dropped 14 lbs, I was feeling sassy (yes I said SASSY) and ready to celebrate my husband's 40th in Vegas. We've been through this; I know. Well I did veer off course but because it wasn't insane I viewed my cheating as a blip on the radar, not an emergency. Just to be 'sure' I was back on track, though, I skipped my weigh-in last Saturday so I could, you know, get in a solid 7 days and post a loss today. Welp, to that Jakey G says:

 

I gained almost 3 lbs in two weeks. How? Why? Pretty easily. I went on vacation, and then this past week I stuck to low carb foods but drank wine four out of seven days, and then Thursday night we went out and had wayyyy too much wine and cheese. Hungover the next morning, I had a secret cheesecake brownie at Starbucks before declaring to myself I was 'really' back on low carb. Mortifying. I did end up staying very low carb for the rest of the day, though, and all told 2.8 lbs up after two weeks fucking around is not awful. But man, it's also not cool. I want to be UNFAT. Stat.

Last night and this morning I read another great book on the science of eating low carb and it has inspired me to take serious action so I can start finally posting those impressive (30 lbs! 50 lbs! 75 lbs gone! 100 lbs and fireworks! 150 lbs and spontaneous combustion caused by my hotness!!) results. If you're into low carb I highly recommend it: 

This book echoes a lot of Gary Taubes' points about carbs affecting insulin which controls both appetite and fat storage, and it also goes into more nitty gritty on how low carb diets are actually high fat diets and how that works. They also cite many encouraging studies which again emphasize how tough so-called 'balanced' diets are to stick with for those of us who are insulin resistant. For  overweight women who were put on 50% carb diets vs. 5-10% carb diets, the low carbers lost more body fat. What I thought was really fascinating was that among the women on the higher carb plan was that even when they all ate the exact same number of calories, the amount of weight lost varied greatly from person to person. Within the low carb group, weight loss was consistent among the subjects (basically because insulin and therefore insulin resistance was taken out of the equation), so again we have more proof that the simplistic 'calories in calories out' notion is flawed. Huzzah!

Meanwhile, even though I didn't do it over my first four successful weeks, I plan to start tracking my food intake- not to purposefully limit myself but to be able to track my personal ratios of fat, protein, and carbs. I think it's time to geek out and lose weight, people. Have a sweet weekend.