What's your secret?
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wabmester
Posts: 2,748 Member
At a family gathering over the weekend, there was a lot of interest in my weight loss. I love talking about the mechanisms involved, but surprisingly there wasn't much interest in that topic. 
Anyway, somebody asked me (from across the room): "What's your secret? Are you running marathons?"
All I could say was "Low carb!" (In this particular instance, I also added "Just like your husband!" To which she responded sadly "He doesn't do that anymore.")
This got me thinking. The people I talked to had a variety of knowledge and experience, including current and former low-carbers. Most of them expressed interest, but ALL of them expressed skepticism or recalled their failed experiences.
For me, the "secret" was probably a combination of my doc recommending statins and my decision to go cold turkey on grains and sugary crap. Those two factors had the most influence on my success, and I'm starting to realize how few people succeed at this.
What's your secret?
Anyway, somebody asked me (from across the room): "What's your secret? Are you running marathons?"
All I could say was "Low carb!" (In this particular instance, I also added "Just like your husband!" To which she responded sadly "He doesn't do that anymore.")
This got me thinking. The people I talked to had a variety of knowledge and experience, including current and former low-carbers. Most of them expressed interest, but ALL of them expressed skepticism or recalled their failed experiences.
For me, the "secret" was probably a combination of my doc recommending statins and my decision to go cold turkey on grains and sugary crap. Those two factors had the most influence on my success, and I'm starting to realize how few people succeed at this.
What's your secret?
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Flat out refusal to do statin drugs and willing to do whatever it takes to drop weight and get healthy
For me it was a low carb menu at an 1800 calorie limit.
It just works!!1 -
My secret was letting go of the denial. I KNEW that grains and carbs made me crave sugar and bready things like no tomorrow but I didn't want to believe it. I just kept telling myself I could just calorie count or choose smaller portions or......excuse after excuse. Even when I wasn't "dieting' per say but just tracking, I could EASILY eat 3,000 calories and still be hungry throughout the day.
With keto, I barely ever feel hungry. I eat at meal times because I get a little tinge of "hmm maybe you should eat", but I don't have the crazy sugar swings where I'm left shaking and needing to grab something high in sugar just to feel ok. This is the first time in 15+ years that I don't feel hungry all of the time. I will admit, there are times when I just wish I could eat anything and be thin. But I've caved a couple of times in my 48 days and each time, it totally wasn't worth it. So I KNOW that this is a complete lifestyle change for me.
So I guess that's my secret. Just being real with myself.2 -
No macro secret, just this picture.
Ok, that and seeing my BP slowly creeping up after years of remaining low despite my weight, being tired and unable to keep up with my kids last summer while on a once in a lifetime trip, and finally realizing that I was headed for an early death, and definitely not living up to my promise to my wife that we'd grow old doing having the active life we had when we met, if I didn't take control over my health.
From that day on (my birthday last September) I've been focussed. How I get there is basically unimportant to me although reducing carbs and not fearing fat met my intellectual approval and that's been the plan from day one.
Not done yet, but probably ready to ring in my 70 pound loss today. I have something between 20 and 35 left to go depending on how it all feels.
If someone asked me I'd probably say replacing the easy-carbs for breakfast, lunch and snacks with more nutritious alternatives, keeping my daily intake to a deficit, and significantly increasing my activity level. But most of all I'd tell them my secret is I'm motivated not to die young or live an unhealthy unhappy life.4 -
For me it was a big box of Valentine chocolates I was powering my way through. No joke. I suddenly realized I'd been eating like Cookie Monster for over a year, downing donuts, cookies, cakes, chocolates.... That was so unlike me. I knew eating all those sweets made me feel like crap, and I knew they were sucking the life out of me. So I put the chocolates out for hubby to eat and stopped right at that moment.3
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I read The Power of Habit, which had been on my reading wish list for a long time. It was the first time I'd been to the local library (we moved recently), and my little guy crawled over to it and knocked it off the shelf. It was as close to a sign from God as I've ever seen.
I read it cover to cover within a couple of days, and really held on to the idea of setting up a "keystone habit" of tracking all of my food intake and exercise. Keystone habits are uncompromisable, single core habits that fuel good decisions and changes throughout the life of an individual or organization. Writing down everything you eat was one of the examples listed, and it made sense for me.
I'm kind of a data and analysis geek, so it's a big thrill to be able to easily look back over a week, month, etc and see the trends. I've started to add other pertinent health data as notes in my food diary, so that I can always answer doctors' questions.
I have deliberately avoided foisting my opinions on my family, because that never seems to go over well. We do limit the kids' sugar as we've always done, and I think it's gotten easier as I've changed my habits. They never see me eat sugar, because I don't, so now I can't be a hypocrite when I tell them they're only allowed one small treat per day, and not every day. My husband has started playing around with his habits, too, cutting down on alcohol consumption (he's not an alcoholic, but cutting back is almost always a good thing.) He has started shunning some carbs when we go out to eat, too. It seems like some of my habits are rubbing off on him.
I go to the gym, and bring the kids with me. My husband has started doing the same.2 -
For me it was a big box of Valentine chocolates I was powering my way through. No joke. I suddenly realized I'd been eating like Cookie Monster for over a year, downing donuts, cookies, cakes, chocolates.... That was so unlike me. I knew eating all those sweets made me feel like crap, and I knew they were sucking the life out of me. So I put the chocolates out for hubby to eat and stopped right at that moment.
I had been keeping a stash of chocolate or other sweets around, almost constantly, since we moved to our new house. I realized what a horrible habit I was setting up. No more stash! I didn't deliberately quit chocolate, but I told myself it would only be 70% cacao or more. I haven't even been tempted to get that, oddly enough. I tried some M&Ms over vacation, but they were so cloyingly sweet and unrewarding that I ate six and threw the rest in the trash with no regrets.
Something is very different this time, between the LCHF diet and the "habits" perspective I've adopted. It's really not about hitting a goal weight. It's about being as healthy as I can for myself and my family for the rest of my life.
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For me, it wasn't a quick thing. I had a struggle as a teen with family issues, stupidly got married about a year out of high school (I was 19), and spent the next almost 17 years married to a friend I never should have married - and the lack of true affection in my marriage spiraled into feelings of utter worthlessness and all manner of insanity. My now ex told me he didn't want to be married anymore, and it almost destroyed me. The one morning, I woke up and decided I was worth it. I wanted to live the example life I wish to gift to my daughter, and so it began. It was a heck of a lot of trial and error and treatment of this and diagnosis of that.
My PCP had begged me for years to cut my carbs but I was so addicted, I couldn't even fathom it being something I could ever manage. Then my endocrinologist started in, but he backed his recommendations with health facts, science, diagnoses, and such. Around this time, I did a challenge at work for s&g's. I lost 25 pounds or so in 12 weeks, but I couldn't maintain it. I was miserable as I could be. I got downright neurotic. I regained about ten and set out about maintaining it.
So, I maintained and I got deep in my head to figure out why I kept failing at EVERYTHING. There were some dark miserable moments. A lot of research. A lot of friends listening to my crap, my excuses, all of it. I met some awesome new friends who started me really considering going low carb. Talked to my endo about it, he was gung ho on board, loved MFP, gave me macros to set at, and so forth.
I was still terrified, then in January, I bought a ton of post holiday sale chocolate. In less than 3 days, I binge ate 17 oz of chocolates alone, atop my weird eating habits at the time. On that third day, Wednesday, feeling crummy and crappy part way through the last bit, I told myself, "Eat the rest, get this binge out of your system, tomorrow, we're going low carb."
I haven't looked back. So I guess my secrets were, deciding I was worth fighting for, getting my head on straight, figuring out what didn't work, taking my health and doctor seriously, researching, finding like friends, and stepping out into the light, prepared - and finally finding something that made sense for my body. Once in a while I question things, but I find that the things I worried most about - like not being able to eat tomatoes - my body tolerates okay because it doesn't see that as sugar, but fuel. Finding ways to adapt around the horrible hills and valleys, and just focusing on helping others as much as I was helped. I felt so lost before. Now things just ... I don't know ... I guess they just finally make sense - like someone finally helped me focus the lens on my camera.
EDITED TO ADD: Compromise - I can find a friendly to my way of eating version of just about any food out there I miss, love, or want to eat. Getting creative, and making this plan my own.4 -
What's my secret.... well, I don't feel like I have been at this long enough to have visible enough results or to say I will succeed at this. However, that said.... I think I will succeed because I felt terrible before and I was amazed when I started eating this way and I felt terrific. And the one day I really slipped and ate a lot of carbs, I felt awful again.0
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Hugs to you, Knit. You are an inspiration!
My secret is having some major medical issues occur all within about a year's time. It suddenly sunk in that I was killing myself and it was time to stop...NOW!1 -
AngInCanada wrote: »
I was going to say the exact same thing! Cant believe how much younger you look.
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#blush# thank you! I feel twenty years younger too! So not quite done yet but already fit.
That first frame, a joke picture at a Christmas party, was enough to convince me. I kept it.
Incidentally, already being fit is one secret or underappreciated reality that isn't obvious when we first start down these journeys... That you become fitter, fit even, long before the end goal is reached. That means of course that you get to reap the benefits of fitness much more quickly than we may realise at the start. Such a bonus!1 -
Motivators. MFP logging, obviously. Ketostix (they work great for me!). Not weighing too many times (once a month). Pinterest browsing for LCHF ideas. FB LC groups. Anything that motivates! I'm like a horse with a carrot. I respond much better to positive reinforcement than criticism.2
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Oh I forgot doing it with my husband and msging other LC friends! Having someone who is doing it with you is a huge motivator.1
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Really, I have to add, this group. The incredible support, advice, feedback, suggestions.... and being in touch with others who are on this journey to health with me. I quit every other attempt at low carb because I just didn't know what to eat. I didn't know how great it could be to eat this way. I never gave it a real chance beyond the first several weeks of water weight loss.2
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for me. I had a choice. continue going on the way i have been, or do what the doc said..Then she told me I had metabolic syndrome, now that scared me to death. It can cause heart attacks or strokes. Well lets see, my genes have heart problems on my dad and my mom has strokes. Which evil do I want to do?0
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I guess my secret is that I gave up all candy a full month before I decided to go Keto. Candy was my drug! I craved it constantly. If I even looked at skittles, I had to eat them!
I decided that would be my test of will power. And what got me through that first step was comparing my "struggle" for sugar to the struggle of those I care about.
When I compared fighting off a sweet tooth to my Daughters fight to keep her type1 under control, it suddenly seemed quite silly to feel like it's hard to simply not stuff sugar down my throat.
When I compared it to my Dad's fight against lung cancer and how sick and exhausted he feels. How much he struggles to consume the most basic amounts of nutrition because everything tastes aweful due to chemo, I couldn't allow myself to be so weak that I couldn't say no to "just a little treat" after observing his strength.
When I compared it to my Neice's battle against addiction that cost her 3 years of her freedom just as her daughter became school aged. Hearing her speak so openly now about her recovery and how every day is a new battle, but one she is ready to face because she appreciates each day so much now that she is healthy and drug free... I couldn't dare say something so stupid as "I failed to kick my sugar addiction because it's too hard".
All of this came to mind during a lecture I was delivering to my newly type2 sister who refuses to take meds but won't change her eating because of at least 6 different excuses. I asked her to change 1 thing only as a start. To stop drinking soda. She simply won't even try and I was so frustrated with her that I just went into a full blown lecture pointing out how hard being healthy can be, but that it's worth it.
It didn't sink in for her, but it did sink in for me.
Even though I didn't have any health concerns prompting my changes, I am still feeling better and better every day.3 -
No secret, just fear. Last November, I went to my physician, because I was feeling generally unwell. I thought I had mono, but found out I was now a Type 2 diabetic with an A1C of 11%. I am only 43 years old and just gave birth to my 3rd child a little over a year earlier. He wanted to put me on insulin, but I wanted to avoid medication by eliminating the very thing that was making me ill...carbs.
So, I got serious. I started reducing my carbs immediately, but dropped to 20-30 net carbs in March. I have lost 44 lbs and my A1C is now in the non-diabetic range. My lipid profile is that of a teenager. I am so very thankful that I was diagnosed early, before long-term damage set in.
I have more to lose, but this is a lifestyle I am committed to. Low carb is most definitely sustainable.
And I like it!
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Really letting go of old beliefs about food and giving lchf a real chance. It's paid off. I am not super tempted to deviate from plan, and I know if I do it's not the end of the world. It's really helped me change my mindset about food because I feel so good eating this way.2
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It would be so great if we could all find that one size fits all secret for getting and staying healthy, but as evidenced above, it's different for all of us. Some of us have had health scares, some have watched our loved ones suffer unnecessarily, for some it was middle age creep, others the lack of control... the list goes on and on. But the one common theme is always when we take that step to love ourselves and put our health and happiness on the top of our usually pretty long and external focused to do lists. This happens only happens when each of us is ready for it, when we make changes for our long term benefit and move forward on a path which allows us to feel confident and happy and focused on ourselves. The stars align, or some serious kick in the pants, and we have to pause to evaluate what makes me happy...and then go for it!! Sounds like we've all had that moment and were lucky enough to find MFP, this WOE and this group! Best of luck to us all on this journey.
PS: If anyone does find the secret, I am all about it!!2
