How Would You Characterize Your Old Eating Habits?
Twibbly
Posts: 1,065 Member
Just out of curiosity, how would you characterize your old eating habits?
I was on the "Hummingbird Diet", where you eat half your weight in sugar every day. I had no problems with eating cake or cookies for pretty much every meal and considered pumpkin pie to be a vegetable.
I was on the "Hummingbird Diet", where you eat half your weight in sugar every day. I had no problems with eating cake or cookies for pretty much every meal and considered pumpkin pie to be a vegetable.
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For the most part, low carb since 1998, just too much of it and a few too many "treat days" that often became "treat weeks." Oh, and the wine...yeah, the wine. ;-)0
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I fell for the CICO, and it never worked! Also gained the most while eating low fat!0
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Too much of a good thing, according to SAD. Too many carbs, a lot were "healthy" and some were not. Not very much fat at all.0
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"Low carb" since 2010, with the same cheat weeks that tru2one described, often bleeding into each other and becoming cheat months.0
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Just too many calories.. and too many cookies. I didn't realize I was eating upwards of 2500 calories a day. I also didn't realize I really had a sweets problem until a few months ago. I thought it was the cheese (well yes, it is the cheese too, but I can lose weight eating cheese, but not cookies) snacking every hour, a couple 20-30 grams of cheese on a cracker about 3 to 4 times a day. Huge dinners (which I still eat, just a different composition.. lots of veggies now) small chocolate binges and potato chips almost every night. But there are things I REALLY miss... oh well.. gotta sacrifice SOMETHING. I literally can't have my cake and eat it too..0
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Compulsive snacker. Only gained about 1-2lb each year since high school, so ended up 30-40lbs overweight. Fat enough to be threatened with statins by my doc, so trying LC instead.
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Basically i was a lazy eater (lots of liquid calories and late night fast food combined with a yearly membership to the gym from January to march) for about a decade. Then a stern CICO for about a year and then i saw the light last august... :-)0
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I've always cooked from scratch, and generally "healthy" foods- whole grains, lots of veggies & fruits, good protein, lower fat (like the sub greek yogurt for mayo type tricks). I've played with paleo, was gluten- and dairy-free for 18 months, but for the most part in the past 2-3 years have tried to focus on "clean" eating. Thankfully, because I have always done a fairly good job making real food, my kids (8, 6, and 3) actually eat pretty well, aren't afraid of vegetables, and ask for fruit as a snack. I am the only one in the family who has struggled with weight; my husband actually has the opposite problem and struggles to gain any weight (he is 6'4" and weighs between 165-170... less than I weigh at 5'4"!), and my kids are all around the 25th percentile for weight.
Then a couple of months ago I had an upper endoscopy, and they said I had villous damage and inflammation consistent with either celiac, an eating disorder, or overuse of NSAID's. Since I've never had an eating disorder, and have to be dying before I actually think to take a pain killer (seriously, I have babies without drugs, I'm not the type to pop a pill for a headache!), I figured I probably should go gluten-free again... and since I also needed to lose weight I figured I'd try keto. Originally I found it via I Breathe I'm Hungry (via Pinterest), and her meal plans made it seem super easy and do-able, and I even was able to convince my friend and her husband to do it with me.
The hardest part for me has actually been to not have my husband and kids on the diet with me... I do make a lot of LCHF dinners and they eat them too, but usually I will give them something else on the side...0 -
Lots of fruit and veggies and "healthy" grains, low fat, low calories. Just like the doctors told me. They were happy with my diet, and said I just needed to exercise at least an hour every day. Ended up at 236 lbs. Yes, had ice cream sometimes, but really stuck to diet for the most part.0
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I was a seafood vegetarian for 26 years, and lactose intolerant for about 10-12 years, and gluten free for the past few years as well.
For the most part, I think I ate "healthy foods", but wasn't really losing any weight because I was eating too much. Once I started weighing and measuring everything, it became painfully clear how MUCH overeating I was doing. For a sedentary computer worker, that's just not good.
I am "paleo-curious" and like the ideas and recipes I saw for the paleo diet. Occasionally I picked up paleo meals and snacks from a local prepared food chain called Snap Kitchen. I loved that the food was categorized and labeled very clearly with regards to what it had in it and dietary styles it might be good for, and almost everything there is gluten-free (and LOTS of dairy free).
When both my fiance and some of my co-workers got into the keto dietary lifestyle, I started studying it and trying to figure out if I could make it work with my dietary restrictions at the time. I even played with a few recipes that still fit into "seafood vegetarian with no dairy or gluten" and thought, "Hey, I might be able to do this."
I played with recipes and numbers, and decided it probably wouldn't work out for me. Finally took the plunge and started eating dairy again to see how well the daily probiotics I've been having were working. They did. YAY! Hurdle one.
I made some chocolate-covered bacon (keto friendly unsweetened) as a test and gave it to co-workers, then made it again for my fiance. The bacon smelled so good...and I had some left over...
Somehow it made its way into the skillet and into my mouth. Well, there I went. Full on back to eating piggies and birdies...but I still won't touch "red" meat.
26 years of seafood vegetarian gone in the bite of a bacon. I think food's started to turn around again and get back to having cleaner and healthier versions available. Besides, it's nice to be able to sit down and eat a meal with my fiance vs. "his and hers" plates. haha
-T.
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I have never been in denial about loving sweets and junk food. I could care less about eating a meal or real food as long as I had some snacks to eat. Muffins, donuts, chips, crackers and cheese, whatever falls into the junk food category. Some people think about going low carb and say they wouldn't be able to handle it b/c they would miss the bread and pasta. My answer would be what about the cake and ice cream forget the bread. lol. If you would have asked me before did I get fat from overeating, my answer would have easily been no. I felt like I grazed/snacked all day and maybe had 1 meal. How could one get fat from that? It wasn't until I tried CICO and logged my food did I realize how little serving you get for the calories. It's very easy to overeat on junk food, b/c unless you eat A LOT you never really feel full or stuffed like you would from eating a meal. Hints the reason low carb is best for me. To avoid the sweets all together.0
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Oh gracious, I used to eat so healthy! But then I had babies, three kids in three years, and breastfed each one. During pregnancy I ate whatever I could (because my appetite wasn't great--I was hungry, but I had such bad indigestion and nausea that I couldn't stomach much), which usually ended up being sandwiches, potato chips, crackers, cold cereal... and then after the babies were born and I was breastfeeding I would be insatiably hungry and, because I was breastfeeding, you know, I'd allow myself extra calories each day in the form of something super carby and sugary like a piece of cake or some ice cream or a cinnamon roll. I would make pancakes at least every other week, eat waffles or a bagel for breakfast, eat sandwiches and chips and something sweet for lunch, snack on more chips when I got home while dealing with the kids, then eat some "lazy food" (pizza, fast food, frozen dinner) before bed. And repeat. I never had much of a sweet tooth until a few years ago. I pretty much told myself that pregnancy was the only time in my life people wouldn't criticize me for being fat or for eating whatever I wanted. And then my milk supply would inevitably tank at some point postpartum (in retrospect, probably when I got pregnant again in two of those cases), and some well-meaning fellow moms told me their supply would decrease if they didn't eat donuts (yes, donuts) or cake (yup, cake) every day. So I started eating sweets every.single.day. Honestly it was that very thing that led me to this WOE. The sweets. I was literally halfway through a box of Valentine's chocolates in about an hour's time frame (mindless eating, grabbing one each time I walked by) and just decided that was it. I was done. And then I stumbled upon y'all..... 0
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By the way, with the exception of one box of Atkins chocolate bars and a couple tablespoons of peanut butter, I haven't had sweets since then (since the Valentine's chocolates, I mean). And I haven't regretted it for a second.0
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Living the American Nightmare Diet. I grew up in a house where we had something frozen, delivered or from a drive thru every night. Every once in a while (a few times per year) my mom would get the urge to cook for a few weeks. Hot dogs and mac n cheese, casseroles with cream soup in them, pasta with garlic bread but no salad. Once in a while things like pork chops or a roast, and any veggies on the side would be drowning in butter and cheese. I drank HiC or KoolAid until I was 10 or so, and then was allowed to drink Coke all day like my parents. Never wanted water, they never suggested it. The only fish I'd had either had Charlie on the label or said "filet o" on the box.
I had no idea what plain, normal food was supposed to taste like until years after I'd moved out on my own. To my mind, if it didn't taste like sugar and salt, it tasted wrong.0 -
Living the American Nightmare Diet. I grew up in a house where we had something frozen, delivered or from a drive thru every night. Every once in a while (a few times per year) my mom would get the urge to cook for a few weeks. Hot dogs and mac n cheese, casseroles with cream soup in them, pasta with garlic bread but no salad. Once in a while things like pork chops or a roast, and any veggies on the side would be drowning in butter and cheese. I drank HiC or KoolAid until I was 10 or so, and then was allowed to drink Coke all day like my parents. Never wanted water, they never suggested it. The only fish I'd had either had Charlie on the label or said "filet o" on the box.
I had no idea what plain, normal food was supposed to taste like until years after I'd moved out on my own. To my mind, if it didn't taste like sugar and salt, it tasted wrong.
Lmao. I feel bad for laughing but how you wrote it is Hilarious!0 -
I went on Atkins in the middle 80s ... Then had a couple of cheat decades... Back now.0
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I ate what was a considered a pretty good diet.
I like to cook so I cooked a lot of meals with loads of veggies and sauces. 2 Eggs with whatever left over veg on a piece of toast every morning for breakfast. There was always plentiful fruits (we live in the sub tropics so always cheap and plentiful fruit and veg). Natural pot set yogurts. So lots of fruit, vegetables with some meat thrown in.
1-2 coffees with 2 very heaped tsp of sugar. Plenty of water.
Pizza/kfc/fish and chips once a week.
Potato chips and softdrink on the weekends only.
Ended up at 340lb - 155kg.
My husband (6'3" and lanky) could never understand why I would continue to gain weight considering I ate what was considered far better than he did.
Now we know.
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Sugar
Starches all week and candy all weekend.0 -
I would characterize my old eating habits as the end result of being led astray by the "health experts", conventional wisdom, my doctor, marketing and media.......and throw any other entity in there that dictates or places ideas into our heads about what we should be eating. Sprinkle in western society's obsession with instant gratification and getting to have it all....and you get a recipe for disaster.
The end result of it is that I have been overweight much of my life, despite growing up in a household where we did not eat junk food, we rarely ate out, and we ate home cooked meals from scratch, with lots of fruit, vegetables, protein and healthy grains. In my quest to be thin, I tried restricting calories while on a multitude of diets that did not last, nor did they produce lasting results. My eating was a mess, and I always felt deprived when dieting. Failure of the diet produced shame. I would say it was a sad experience. I was always hungry.
I would say my experience with primal LCHF now is a very happy one, and I have control of my eating unlike any other time in my life. It is so satisfying....and I am losing weight ! Yay for me !0 -
I used to also eat "healthy" with "good" carbs and fruit and veggies. However I love to bake and make candy and all that good stuff during the holidays....oh who am I kidding Friday could be a holiday for all I cared! Anyway now eating this way I still bake for my skinny hubby but have no urge to eat any of it. Thank you LCHF!!!0
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growing up - meat & potatoes, mostly whole foods, some fast food
teens & 20s - vegetarian (some s.a.d. but relatively 'healthy': fruit, veg, whole grains, lotsa cheese & nut butters, soy based crap)
early 30s - back to meat eating, more whole foods, still eating plenty of bread (though it was sprouted grain stuff & sourdough lol)
mid 30s - mostly paleo but still not super low carb - plenty of fruit, root veg, sweet potato etc. (with big carby refined food/sugar slips here & there)
now - primal/keto0 -
I've always cooked from scratch, and generally "healthy" foods- whole grains, lots of veggies & fruits, good protein, lower fat (like the sub greek yogurt for mayo type tricks). <snip>
The hardest part for me has actually been to not have my husband and kids on the diet with me... <snip>
We're all here for ya! Through thick and thin, we'll support you!
I hope this helps,
Dan the Man from Michigan
It's Ketogenic or Bariatric! How I Found the Ketogenic Diet
Blog #10 Keto: Abbreviations, Acronyms & Terminology Used on the LCD & Keto Discussion Groups
Blog #13 DittoDan's Milestone's, First's And Good Changes Since Starting the Ketogenic Diet
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The hardest part for me has actually been to not have my husband and kids on the diet with me... I do make a lot of LCHF dinners and they eat them too, but usually I will give them something else on the side...
I'm in this situation too. I've had to focus on the benefits and keep remembering that is me, my health and my body on the line.
I also cook extra and they add it to their meals, it's much easier than cooking two different meals. Another thing I do is cook a large patch of low carb and if they want to have a carb meal then I have something already prepared than I can easily heat up for myself.
You are important. Just as important as your kids and your husband. Do it for you.
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Changed throughout my life. I always liked healthy foods but also junk. Late teens, early 20's was a fast food and restaurant junkie! Then I went on Atkins and saw the light! But cheated a lot. Then I fell for the "Eat Clean" diet and wound up being diagnosed with Celiac. So after that it has been pretty much Paleo/Primal, and at varying carb levels.0
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Carb addict for 40 years but was totally unaware of the fact.0
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Living the American Nightmare Diet. I grew up in a house where we had something frozen, delivered or from a drive thru every night. Every once in a while (a few times per year) my mom would get the urge to cook for a few weeks. Hot dogs and mac n cheese, casseroles with cream soup in them, pasta with garlic bread but no salad. Once in a while things like pork chops or a roast, and any veggies on the side would be drowning in butter and cheese. I drank HiC or KoolAid until I was 10 or so, and then was allowed to drink Coke all day like my parents. Never wanted water, they never suggested it. The only fish I'd had either had Charlie on the label or said "filet o" on the box.
I had no idea what plain, normal food was supposed to taste like until years after I'd moved out on my own. To my mind, if it didn't taste like sugar and salt, it tasted wrong.
This sort of.
I was going to call my early years the "White Trash Diet." Pretty much any sort of white trash type of reality television where they eat junk, takeout, anything out of a box, and sweets and well, white trash foods, this was my early life.
Then I was on my own for a bit, but worked fast food and worked all the time with weird schedules, so that was more less a few years of the "Wendy's diet."
Then I got married to a man who wouldn't eat anything that you could tell it had ever been part of an animal (no bones, all processed stuff) or if it didn't come out of a box (he was a hamburger helper fanatic). This ended up landing me well over 150 pounds gain - OMG actually 200 pounds gained during the course of our almost 17 year marriage.
Different times I tried getting healthier, but with programs or fads which of course never worked. My doctors telling me to lower my carbs and such did NOT seem possible, as I was utterly bingeworthy addicted at that point.
Then my daughter started learning about nutrition in school while my ex and I separated. We began exploration of the SAD/DASH type healthier options. It worked for me for a while to drop a decent chunk of weight, and for her to gain some health and endurance.
Then, I took some mental time off, ate whatever I wanted, usually making healthier choices, but still BINGING like a crazy person. Never understanding why I did it, hating myself for doing it, despising myself for having no willpower/gumption, etc.
Finally, I found my way here after listening to my PCP nag me for years and my endocrinologist mention it a couple of times. After formally having PCOS tossed into the bucket along with confirmed hypothyroidism and a few other things, I started to look into this way of eating seriously. Luckily I'd already made friends with awesome folks like @Alliwan and @Dragonwolf. After the research started (mostly into treating my PCOS firstly), I fell into the reality that what my doctors had been telling me might actually work if I could handle the cravings. Which I utterly didn't believe was possible, so I was utterly shocked when by DAY 2 of INDUCTION, they were toast!!!! Been here ever since. 0
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