Low-Carbing When Life Hands You Lemons

I read somewhere once that the key to maintaining a low-carb lifestyle is taking advantage of the heightened energy you get from having a stable blood sugar in order keep up the hard work of planning and preparing more healthy food so that you continue the process. It made total sense to me, since sugar and carbs make me feel way too sluggish and lazy to even think about spending time in the kitchen.

For the last week, though, I've been under the weather with a nasty cold, and until yesterday, I've been all too happy to use my lack of energy as an excuse to go back to eating fast food, sugary treats, and instant boxed meals. Part of me knew that eating better would probably make me feel better faster, but the thought of toiling in the kitchen while in my drowsy, congested, cold-medicine-induced state was so unappealing that I just gave in to the temptation to get food in the easiest way possible.

So how do you stay on track when you're thrown for a loop? Are there any strategies you use when you find yourself in a position where you have little time or energy to plan for healthy eating? Or if you allow yourself to slip a little when life gets tough, how do you get yourself back on track?

"Just Water Weight"

Lots of people like to complain about low carb diets. Naysayers are always either trying to convince us that butter, cream, and eggs are bad for us and that we NEED grains to survive, or they're attacking the straw-Atkins-dieter who eats a slab of bacon for every meal and zero vegetables. One of the criticisms that drives me the most crazy, though, is the one where people fully acknowledge low-carbers' impressive results, but they immediately dismiss it as "fake" weight-loss, because "it's just water weight".

I mean, really? Is is so necessary to put successful dieters in their place that we have to resort to devaluing all of their efforts with the notion that because they aren't losing weight "the hard way" (starvation), they aren't really losing it at all?

It only takes reading the science behind any low carb or low glycemic eating plan to understand that once you stop spiking your blood sugar with sugary and starchy foods, you no longer have huge excesses of insulin causing the storage of new fat, and your body goes to work to burn off your current excesses of body fat for energy. You basically become a fat-burning (NOT water-burning) machine.

Now, it's true that while your body is switching over from carb-burning to fat-burning, the initial, almost immediate, weight-drop on an eating plan like Atkins comes from the release of excess water weight. Primal eating expert Mark Sisson has even said that some people can carry 10-20 pounds or more of retained water, depending on their size, due to the highly inflammatory nature of the standard, grain-filled American diet. So those first pounds may not be pure body fat, but does it really matter?

After losing a few pounds of "water weight", my clothes fit better, my face looks less bloated, and I noticeably have more energy and find myself able to move easier. If the first however-many pounds of lost weight on a low carb diet comes from the release of water our bodies had no business carrying around in the first place, I guess I just don't see what the big deal is.

As I see it, successfully de-bloating yourself on your way to fat-burning is "real" weight-loss. It's an initial payoff that tells you you're doing something healthy and right, and it should be a great motivator to keep at it. Don't let anyone try to tell you it doesn't count.

Boredom, Laziness, and Kitchen Amnesia

Like Katie, I'm not opposed to occasionally "cheating" when I want to experience something delicious at a social event or if I feel like I might die if I don't have whatever indulgence I get a strong craving for, but I really do feel bad about going off plan when I know I'm doing it out of boredom or laziness.

Switching from a lifestyle where I eat 75 to 80% of my meals out to one where I try not to eat out more than once or twice a week has been a special challenge. I only enjoy cooking when I get really in the mood to do it (which is not all that often), and when my laziness combines with hunger, I develop this condition in which I suddenly forget about all of the delicious and healthy food in my fridge and cupboards just waiting to be eaten, and all I can think about is going to a restaurant where I will be sure to be tempted by bread baskets and loaded mashed potatoes and dessert menus. This is bad for both my waistline AND my bank account. It breaks my heart when I have to throw out the vegetables I find practically liquefied in my fridge, all because I never felt like chopping them up and exposing them to a heat source. Sometimes I really miss the days of Bagel Bits and Kraft Dinner.

I'm trying a new experiment, though -- one that will hopefully keep me from feeling that dreaded "But there's nothing to EAT here!" feeling that I get before mealtimes, and one that should keep me from letting good food go to waste. Right after I went grocery shopping yesterday, while our house's food inventory was super fresh in my mind, I wrote out a list of EVERY POSSIBLE healthy, low carb meal I could think of that I could conceivably prepare with the foods in my kitchen, and I posted this list to the fridge. I made a second list for snacks and posted it, too. The plan is to continue updating the lists as I use up groceries and shop for new ones so it's impossible to forget what I have. Now, when I feel myself getting hungry and I can't think of anything to make, I can go to my lists, and hopefully I'll be interested enough in something on them to work up the excitement I need to want to eat at home and stop craving restaurant food.

Think it'll work? What techniques do you use to make sure you get the most of your groceries?

Taking Control

For me, the scariest part of dieting–or changing your lifestyle, as it were–is knowing that it’s all up to me. It’s pretty easy for me to say, “Well, I’m a restaurant reviewer. I have to eat this crème brulee.” Or, when I’m not trying to lose weight, to say, “It’s not a big deal if I eat three ginormous slices of pizza for lunch, because I so rarely have pizza.”

But when you’re actively trying to become healthier (and hopefully thinner!), you realize that every single thing you eat is going to affect your weightloss. My office, for instance, made Pop-Tart ice cream sandwiches to celebrate the month’s birthdays on Friday, and all of the leftover ingredients are hanging out in our cupboards and freezer. My co-workers are doing things like topping ice cream with pudding and using Pop-Tarts for bread on their turkey sandwiches, and every time I see this happening, I think, “WANT!!”

But then I remember that one Pop-Tart is going to make my bloodsugar skyrocket, make my cravings for other sugary crap explode, and stop my weightloss for at least a couple of days. It’s almost never worth it.

The problem is that I then start to obsess a little over not eating anything that might hinder my diet. When my boyfriend suggests we order kebabs and hummus for dinner, I’ll think, “I know chickpeas are low-glycemic, but they still have way more carbs than the chicken breast and salad I was planning to make for myself. Do I want to risk it?”

That’s just ridiculous, because the meal is totally healthy. And I don’t want to be someone who has to live on eggs and protein shakes to lose weight, because that’s not sustainable.

I have to find the balance between taking control and losing control.

Visualizing the Unseen Enemy

When Katie and I were in the 7th grade, we were selected to participate in this special summer program called Women in Science, where we got to hang out with other smart girls from our school and do nerdy, science-y things together like dissect frogs and sheep's hearts and learn all about different diseases and stuff.

I'll never forget how our first lab project on the first day of this program involved looking at the nutrition labels on Snicker's Bars and bags of Cheetos and measuring out and melting wax in amounts equal to the number of grams of dietary fat in each of these items. When we were done, we had these little test tubes full of fat-resembling wax, and we were supposed to be shocked into understanding just how bad these foods were for us. We felt cool that we had used Science to make visible a perceived threat that usually remained hidden.

Looking back on this little experiment, I'm incredibly struck -- first of all -- by how cruel it seems to try to shock adolescent girls by teaching them to fear fat at a time when they are just beginning to realize how much society will value them (or harshly judge them) based on the size and shape of their bodies. Secondly, it's so interesting to me how easily we accepted that dietary fat was the enemy, and none of us had ANY idea that it could be the sugar in those foods that actually caused more damage to our health and our waistlines.

This site that shows the amount of sugar in various foods and beverages totally reminds me of that fat-lab from all those years ago, only this time it gets the real culprit right.

I'd never sit down to 54g of sugar in cube form, even though I've had my fair share of King Sized Snickers Bars.

We never would have thought to measure anything in a Coke, since it's "Naturally Fat Free!", but check out all that sugar.

Ahhhhh!

So what do you think? Does seeing the sugar content in a food deter you from eating it?

Diet Advice, Social Eating, and Feminism

(Cross-posted at Unapologetically Female)

You know the standard diet tips that are always showing up everywhere? The ones we've all heard a million times, but the magazines keep printing them, and the thin and bubbly morning news anchors keep filling segments with them? Sometimes, I feel like the media is droning out an endless Lost-style radio signal telling us to take the stairs, use smaller plates, and stop eating hours before bedtime.

While I find the repetition of many of these tips mildly annoying, there's one that I keep seeing that really gets under my skin: the one that advises we avoid eating alone.

The logic behind this tip is that people who consume most of their food in the presence of others apparently let their self-consciousness about appearing gluttonous get in the way of stuffing their faces. And while this advice may work wonders for some people, it's totally lost on me for a couple of reasons:

1) I've realized over the years that I'm what you might call a social eater. For me, food -- especially junk food full of sugar and starch -- is more fun when it's being shared. While I can stay on track with a healthy eating plan with few problems by myself, I often find a way to use getting together with friends as an excuse to stop caring about what I'm putting into my body. Sadly, this has meant that the times in my life when I feel the most fulfilled socially are also the times when I tend to gain the most weight, and rededicating myself to health and weight-loss often means having to isolate myself for a while in order to develop new habits.

Part of the problem is that I feel like I'm less fun (maybe even less me) when I'm ordering a salad instead of fries and drinking water instead of soda. I've never smoked, and I rarely drink, but I imagine the psychological process involved is similar for people who smoke or drink socially. I have this strong feeling that such indulgence is somehow necessary to my good time. Remember that study that came out a few years ago claiming that people with fat friends are more likely to also be fat? It made sense to me, because I think people just like surrounding themselves with like-minded people who enjoy similar things. Katie and I talk a lot about how there are so many people out there who just don't seem to care about food the way we do, and we both agree that it's much harder to relate to these people socially. Similarly, I doubt someone who thinks a party isn't a party without alcohol would get a lot of enjoyment from hanging out with me, but if you're always in the mood to get together and consume a large pizza and a tube of raw cookie dough, I'm your girl.

2) Those who know me well know that I'm a raging feminist who resents how women in our culture live in a regime in which we are constantly judged by our behavior and appearance and encouraged not to take up too much space. And the "friendly" dieting advice telling us not to eat alone actively counsels us to yield to insecurities derived from societal rules about how much and what types of foods women should be eating. In a culture in which we are are constantly taught that men are entitled to rich foods in large amounts and women are not, diet advice that encourages this sort of self-surveillance in women (anyone else read Foucault in college?) serves to further entrench gendered oppression and inequality.

My problem is that my feminist consciousness makes me want desperately to rebel against diet culture, even though I often actively participate in it, and that creates an ambivalence in me about eating that makes me go back and forth between trying to eat really healthfully and wanting to lash out at the diet industry by eating whatever the hell I damn well please, thankyouverymuch. It's not that appetite and/or fatness are inherently feminist, but in our sexist culture, unapologetic appetite and/or fatness in women is inherently political. And throughout my life, I have taken a special pride in being able -- in the presence of others -- to "eat like a man". I don't know that it's ever even really occurred to me to worry that people might think I'm eating too much, but I hate it when other people know I'm watching what I eat, because it makes me feel antifeminist and stereotypically girly.

I'm interested in hearing what others think about this. Do your individual health goals sometimes end up conflicting with your self-image or your personal politics, and if so, how do you deal with it? Which conventional diet/fitness/health tips annoy the crap out of you?

Diet-Mixing 101: Dining with the Differently Dieting

I've been thinking a lot lately about diet-mixing in its many forms. Katie and I often discuss the nuts and bolts and pros and cons of different low carb approaches to eating, from Atkins to the The Glycemic Load Diet to The Belly Fat Cure, and we often end up mixing the guidelines of lots of different plans to find what works for both our individual tastes and specific food situations.

There's also the kind of diet-mixing that happens when two (or more) people who follow different eating plans eat together. Sometimes, this involves the everyday negotiations that go on between partners or within families over what's for dinner, and other times, it's the difficulty of figuring out a single meal with someone with whom you rarely dine.

Just last week, for example, I was invited over to a friend's house for dinner, knowing fully well that this friend is a fat-gram-watcher/calorie-counter and NOT a low-carber like me. Having no idea what I would be served for dinner, I prepared myself to bite the bullet and graciously accept whatever was available. (I realize that a lot of serious low carbers would scold me for my willingness to compromise, but I still, in many ways, value social comfort over complete control over my food.) Even though my friend had thoughtfully Googled low carb recipes before my visit and ended up planning something mostly acceptable for my way of eating, I still found it SO interesting how much our food choices clashed. As we prepared stir-fried chicken breast and vegetables together in her kitchen, I had to stifle a cringe when she added I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and bottled lite vinaigrette to the skillet. Dessert consisted of mountains of watermelon and mango slices, and even though I've allowed myself fruit ever since I branched out from strict Atkins Induction a few years ago, those are some of the more sugary options and not the ones I usually reach for.

When we chatted over dinner about what sorts of things we eat, she went on about how she's horrified to learn how many calories are actually in many of her favorite foods and how she has grudgingly switched from mayonnaise to mustard on her sandwiches. I explained back that I can eat all the mayo I want as long as I skip the bread. She mentioned that she eats a lot of Lean Cuisine meals, and even though I envied her for a split second for the total convenience of those little frozen dinners, I quickly remembered how tiny and utterly tasteless they are and how hungry I was always left whenever I tried making a meal out of them in the past. At least with low carb, I'm eating real foods full of healthy fats and no added sugars or starches to make my blood sugar go crazy. Even though it's sometimes really hard to avoid carbs, I think it's finally starting to sink in for me that it's so much more satisfying than avoiding fat could ever be.

Mixing It Up

Well, I started this blog in the hopes that I would feel motivated to stick to and write about my low-carb ways, but the way I've been eating lately has done anything but motivate. I guess I can describe it as sort of a hybrid diet -- one in which I've been alternating between eating really low-carb, moderate-carb, and high-carb meals and snacks. I'm feeling occasional (but not out of control) cravings, and I'm only eating until I'm full and not going overboard into that stuffed territory I know all too well. I'm finding that I'm not getting as hungry as I normally do when I allow myself to eat high-carb foods, because I'm not eagerly stuffing myself full of all of the foods I've been missing. It's probably the closest to Intuitive Eating I have come in a long time. I certainly can't say that I've been losing weight or that I feel my absolute best when I'm mixing it up like this, but I'm not gaining any weight, either, and it sure does feel nice to enjoy some of my old favorites without stressing about what I'll be able to find for my next low-carb meal.

Whether or not this will turn out to be a legitimate reason, my main justification for eating this way for right now is that on Saturday I leave for New York City, where I will be visiting my best friend for an entire week. I'm sure I could stick to a low-carb diet while I'm there if I really wanted to, but ummm, yeah. I don't want to. One of the main attractions for me in NYC is the food, so I want to allow myself to enjoy Yankee Stadium concessions, Gray's Papaya hot dogs (bun and all), desserts at Serendipity, burgers and curly fries at Cozy, and whatever other wonders the best friend wants to introduce me to.

So why should next week's planned carb-fest give me license to nibble on concentrated carbs this week? I have two reasons. One is that I am afflicted with the tragic flaw of being a bit of an "all or nothing" kind of person. I can't get excited about sticking faithfully to my low-carb eating plan when I know I'm just going to mess it all up while I'm on vacation, but I'm assuming I'll be incredibly gung-ho to get back onto it hardcore once I'm back. The other (and probably better) reason is that I've learned from experience that when I go from eating very few carbs right into eating lots of them, my body really does not like me for it. I would rather not spend my vacation feeling tired, bloated, and plagued by indigestion and gastrointestinal distress. So I'm sort of experimenting with adding carby foods little by little this week so that my body won't revolt against me on my vacation, and I'll be sure to report back on how well that worked for me.

I still have plenty of low-carb stuff to report on -- like a couple of product reviews and recipe stories -- so look for those to come soon. You can also expect to see a low-carb blogroll emerge on the right side of the screen in the next few days. There are a number of great sites I subscribe to and check daily, and I don't want to keep them all to myself.

Finding a Balance

The way I feel today is precisely why I fare better when I'm able to avoid carby foods. I had a super-indulgent lunch today of breaded chicken tenders, french fries, and non-diet Coke, and even though it was way more food than I usually feel the need to eat all at once, I feel anything but full. There was plenty of fat in my meal to fill me up, but all the sugar and starch have just left me craving more of the same stuff.

When I can stick to low-carb eating, I don't even really think about food until the next meal, but right now, all I can think about is how much I want to go down the hall and buy a candy bar and another Coke. Low-carbing really does prove to me (over and over and over) how sugar and starch really do have additctive qualities. There may be plenty of people who don't experience symptoms of addiction when they eat carby foods, but I am definitely not one of those people.

That said, I really don't regret the lunch I had today. It was delicious, I didn't overeat, and I can overcome the effects of this meal with relatively little discomfort.

As you can tell, I'm not the strictest low-carber in the world -- sort of an on for a couple of weeks, off for a couple of days, then back on eater. I feel like I'm constantly re-evaluating how strictly I want to adhere to any particular way of eating. Only a year into this, I still don't think I've struck a good balance between eating what I want to eat and eating what makes me feel the best. (And the foods that make me feel the best emotionally are usually not the foods that make me feel the best physically.)

When I read books and blogs by folks who have been doing low-carb or sugar-free eating for a long time (like four or five years or more), I'm always struck by how confident and committed they seem to their particular ways of eating. I sometimes wonder if it's because they've just been doing it long enough to have really found what works for them, or if they're just trying so hard to sell others on their "lifestyles" that they end up convincing themselves that they've got it all figured out.

I do not have it all figured out. But I think it's definitely worth it to me to keep trying.

Introduction: About Me and About This Blog

I'm a Midwestern jeans and t-shirts girl in my twenties who ventured into a low-carb eating experiment in June of 2007 that has become more than an experiment. Based on the health benefits I've gotten out of this way of eating and what I've learned about the human body since starting to eat this way, I'm hoping to make low-carbing my continued way of eating.

This blog is a way to record this journey for myself, share what I've learned about low-carb eating with others, and to help keep me motivated to continue this way of eating in a world that is anything but low-carb-friendly.

Before I started the Atkins diet in 2007, I had never been on a diet in my life. I pretty much ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, which included breakfasts of ice cream or leftover pizza, 3-5 cans of non-diet Pepsi a day, and fast food "value meals" 2-3 times a week or more. Plenty of breaded and deep-fried stuff, and always in large amounts. While other people seemed to be able to sense when they were full and stop eating, I could always keep going - cleaning my plate and going back for seconds or thirds - and I'd inevitably feel really sick soon after the meal. I'd recognize that I had totally overeaten and resolve never to eat that much at once again, only to go back and do it over and over again. That sickeningly heavy full feeling (a feeling as though food is lodged throughout my body, from my stomach up through my chest) eventually became normal to me, making it hard to feel satisfied with anything less.

Although I haven't been a "skinny" girl since age six or seven, I managed to eat this way well into my twenties without gaining a significant amount of weight, hovering just above what's considered "average" for my height. It was about a year or so after I graduated college that I hit the dreaded metabolism change and began to pack on pounds like crazy. It happened so fast, I barely noticed it until I was starting to burst out of my largest clothes, and I noticed that I looked like a complete stranger when I saw pictures of myself. I was feeling more and more strain on my knees when I walked or stood for a while, and I was starting to get some pretty severe heartburn and indigestion after meals.

I had never owned a scale in my life (considering them tools of the devil) but after stepping on one at a friend's house, it finally hit me that I had gained a lot of weight in a really short time. I was faced with rapidly declining health and having to buy a whole new wardrobe, and I have to admit it was a little scary. I mentally resolved to try exercising more and giving up soda and deep-fried breaded foods to improve my health, and when my best friend announced to me that she was going to attempt the Atkins diet, I reluctantly decided I might give it a try along with her.

A year later and forty-five pounds lighter, my heartburn and indigestion are gone, my body doesn't ache like it used to, and I fit into my clothes again. I'm not going to lie and say that I have stuck to this eating plan perfectly for the entire year, and I won't try to convince anyone that eating this way is always easy. I didn't, and it's not. I'll be blogging about some of the challenges involved with low-carb eating, my experiences with deviating from the plan, and how I try to stay on track.

I have to admit that blogging about diet is sort of a fraught act for me, and my ambivalence about it will probably come through pretty often on this site. Because what and how we choose to eat is related to way more than just health and weight. The ways in which we eat are connected to our social identities, our emotional identities, our ethnic identities, our gender identities, our class identities, and even our senses self-love and self-worth. The act of dieting has the potential to be an intensely political act, and I want to be careful about what types of statements I make by choosing to follow a particular eating plan.

Honestly, even though I know I didn't exactly eat healthfully before switching to a mostly low-carb lifestyle, I'm pretty proud that I never dieted as a girl or young adult. I don't feel any shame over that at all, considering that:

1) American culture slowly and continuously poisons women to worship a thin ideal. Living in this world is like being set up with a constant IV-drip of images and ideology that encourage us to equate thinness with beauty, femininity, and value, while the slightest presence of fat on our bodies makes us worthless. Eating is supposed to be an act that sustains us and nourishes our bodies, and yet I have never met a woman (myself included) who does not have food issues with which she constantly struggles. Eating disorders are widespread and a major symptom of a society that sends the wrong messages about food and eating.

2) If I had tried dieting before learning about carbohydrate restriction, I most likely would have done it all wrong. By drastically (and unhealthily) lowering my fat and calorie intake and eating tons more carbs, probably screwing up my body's insulin responses even more than I'm sure I already did. I'm also glad I don't have memories of a childhood of disappointment, self-hate, and hungry deprivation.

3) Diet culture is gross. All of this attention the media spends on covering the OMG-scary "Obesity Epidemic" would be much better directed toward criticism of the overblown and creepy diet industry. The way our culture covers and examines health, nutrition, and weight-loss is in need of a major overhaul.

Throughout my journey into low-carb eating and learning about nutrition, it has been my goal (and it will be a goal of this blog) to NOT emphasize weight-loss in a way that puts value judgments on myself or anyone else for what we weigh or how we eat. I completely agree with the ideology of Fat Acceptance in that eating food is a morally neutral act. What you eat, how you eat, when you eat, or how much you eat is never an indication of how good you are as a person. When I discuss the benefits of low-carb eating on this blog, know that I will NEVER judge individuals for choosing to eat high-carb foods. Most of my criticism will be directed at how our world is set up for high-carb eating and works to keep people ignorant about nutrition, despite evidence of the benefits of low-carb eating. In other words, I plan to try my best to not describe sticking to my eating plan as "being good", and to not refer to eating something carby as "cheating". And feel free to call me out on it if you ever catch me doing it.

Prejudice against fat and size discrimination are very real and damaging things in this world, and this blog will in NO way participate in the judgment or shaming of fat people of any size. Period.