Do you indulge or cheat, ever? How often and what do you eat?
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I eat off plan when ever the occasion calls for it. Food traditions are important to me and I like celebrating with food. I also use the holidays to cook old favorites (like potato soup or blueberry crumb cake etc.) which makes my family happy. I enjoy the holidays - and the food - even more now. All good things that make me happy and my diet sustainable. I've been eating LCHF for four years now so this works for me.
BUT... I deal with cravings afterwards that pop up randomly for days. Sometimes it takes an enormous amount of willpower not to give into those cravings. Other times I don't get cravings or they're so mild they don't phase me but I'm always prepared for them so they don't catch me off guard.
Other things that keep me on track (besides being able to ride out the cravings) are marking an X on the calendar with blue highlighter when I eat off plan so I don't invent occasions to indulge (Friday can be a celebration once in a great while, every Friday is not). If the X's start to pile up I can clearly see I'm relapsing and my eating will quickly become a problem if I don't rein it in.
The benefits I get from low carb are immediate and tangible so it feels good to get back to eating normal so that helps. Lastly, I truly enjoy the food I eat and could happily live the rest of my life eating LCHF and never "cheating" again. I don't eat off plan because of cravings or because I'm not happy or bored with my food - I want to eat LCHF and I think that makes a difference.
I hope that helps.4 -
Sunny_Bunny_ wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »Other than some alcohol indulgences, no I haven't cheated. I'm like others here who are afraid to allow it, for fear they wouldn't ever find their way back.
Another motivation is from the pain relief I've experienced! Fibromyalgia pain is near nonexistent! I don't have any desire to return to the pain I used to deal with! This helps keep the cheats at bay too!
Interestingly, if you can manage to stick entirely to liquor, you can avoid having any problems with keto. That being said, you do have to be careful, as excessive drinking of zero carb alcohol can reportedly throw you straight into ketoacidosis, if you're already short on carb intake.
I don't think that's true. As long as your body produces insulin, Ketoacidosis isn't a concern.
There are rare occurrences of alcoholic Ketoacidos but those are cases of long term binge drinking without eating that included vomitting and extreme dehydration.
The father, son & holy ghost (Phinney, Volek & Bernstein) often repeat your basic point - there's no risk of ketoacidosis without very high blood glucose/inadequare insulin production.
(But tell someone who's heard the word "ketoacidosis" that you're on a ketogenic diet.... Better to lead with "low carb".)1 -
Well i'm pretty new to all this. But I allowed a toasted tomato sand. for breakfast this morning Now to make sure it don't send me to an all eat day. Carbs are already at 26 for the day So need to eat right for the rest of day. Next meals are planned. So should be good.
See you all lighter.4 -
Diet Doctor just posted a Guide to Low Carb Cheating and I thought of this thread. The guide seems pretty comprehensive so if you're new to low carb and still working on developing a sustainable diet and healthy habits this might be worth reading.2
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If I'm within the first couple weeks I would not typically cheat unless it's for a family/friends' bday a small piece of cake or something. After about 6 weeks I do introduce 'refeeds' when I start to stall or as it coincides with some family event where there's yummy food put out
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I had a slip yesterday. It started with some fruit, not a problem, but then I added 2 cookies to my plate. That is where we have an issue. Not only because I went over my carbs for the day but also because I have a gluten allergy and really should not be eating those cookies. Today I have heart burn and 'tummy troubles'. I knew I would feel this way and ate the cookies anyway. I'm just glad they tasted good. I wanted so much more and had to call my Hubby on the ride home and talk to him all the way so I wouldn't stop and buy more cookies. The urge to keep eating was huge once I started. I'm clearly not ready to have treats yet.4
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The only 'cheats' I've had since I started keto is going over my calorie goals. Lucky for me, I have no sweet tooth. The stuff I used to 'cheat' with is now the stuff I am supposed to eat, lol.3
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Yes, I have and do cheat.
When I first started trying to lose weight - long before going low carb - I ended up losing weight too quickly (slower than some here... a bit slower than average it seems) because I had both type 1 AND type 2 diabetes. The weight loss decreased type 2 / insulin resistance faster than I could keep up. After 3.5 months, I had a scary day where I had consistently low BG for hours without any bolus and even with no basal insulin during part of that time. It took more than 600g of carbs with no bolus in order to treat lows, and I had BG's in the 20's (mg/dl) and below during part of that time. So I stopped dieting for about 1.5 months.
When I went back to dieting, I gave myself no cheat days for many many months. I have an insatiable appetite and it was worse back then, so I basically felt like I was starving every day for months. I would give myself a "cheat" day twice per year for the next 1.5 years. The "cheat" day meant I would log, but not restrict. I was eating sometimes upwards of 30K calories on those days (I said my appetite was/is insatiable). Since I was losing so slowly, even doing that twice per year seemed to hurt my progress so much that it erased my starving the rest of the year.
After that, I had some plateaus and whooshes, and managed one of them with a modified version of IF where I was not restricting some days and eating almost nothing on other days. That didn't help total calorie intake (fortunately, I didn't gain because it was a true plateau). After the biggest plateau / whoosh, I was back at a small daily deficit and felt like I was starving until the next big plateau. That particular plateau came with a "whoosh" when I cut calories and inadvertently cut carbs. Basically, I went for 10 days eating nothing but vitamins and protein powder. I lost a lot of weight, which I now understand was glycogen / water loss, but something happened so when I stopped and returned to a normal daily deficit, I started losing consistently again.
Fast forward to when I started eating low carb - I cheated a whole 3 day weekend for my birthday and gained a ton of weight. On occasion, I'll eat a bunch of carbs and gain a bunch of weight. It doesn't all come off as quickly as I would expect for water weight, so I can't do that very often. More recently, I've been stuck in a plateau (not a real plateau, but just not losing weight because I've been eating too many calories). So I cut my calories further and have been slowly losing again. I had hoped to reach my goal weight by the end of this year (7.6 lbs. to go as of this morning), but it doesn't look like that is going to happen at this point. Depending on how long that takes (if I keep up at this pace, early March), I might add some additional cheat days to be able to get through it mentally. Adding a cheat day means adding about 2-3 months to the weight loss plan, so that can not happen much... if at all.2
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