Twibbly wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, how would you characterize your old eating habits?

Extremely pleasurable.

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 !

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/keto

rkufeke wrote: »

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.

Carb addict for 40 years but was totally unaware of the fact.

The Cyclical Poor Man's Diet (and before that, just The Poor Man's Diet).

We grew up working poor -- that fun no-man's land between getting government aid and actually being able to make ends meet. As a result, I lived on basic foods -- tuna melts, Ramen, spaghetti with meat sauce were common staples, as was macaroni & cheese and venison. For what we could afford, we ate pretty healthfully, according to conventional standards. We rarely had much of the real junky stuff, though those Hug "juice" things made a regular appearance in my lunch box, as did a Little Debbie of one form or another. The bulk of my carbs came from grains and starches, though (pasta, wheat bread, corn, potatoes, etc). Salads made an occasional appearance, especially in the summer. Most of our veggies usually came out of a can.

Once I moved out, my financial situation slowly improved, so I went from living on peanut butter sandwiches, Ramen, macaroni & cheese, and tuna melts, to what could be described as "Cyclical Poor Man's Diet." The amount of extra money we had would cycle up and down. When it was down, we would eat more home made stuff, which included a fair amount of macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, and other pasta+cheese+tomato sauce dishes, with the occasional steak. When it was up, pizza was a regular member of our house. At that time, "getting healthy"/"losing weight" was switching from cow's milk to soy milk and attempting to not eat half of an extra large pizza (and attempting to not order pizza so often). The start of getting mired in CICO for a few years. This latter part, the attempts to get healthy, could probably be described as the "Mrs. Korg Meets Arnold Schwarzenegger Diet," as it wasn't far off from how Mark Sisson describes the modern wife (Mrs. Korg) in The Primal Blueprint, except I was a protein shake drinker more than a smoothie drinker, and I preferred things like martial arts and weight lifting to spin classes.

When that didn't work, and I found myself constantly hungry (tried the 6-meals-a-day thing, too; that went over like a lead balloon), I switched to Primal in a last ditch effort to see some kind of progress and not be battling with myself all the time. Dropped my carbs to 100g, dropped grains out of my diet, and the rest is pretty much history. I've since lowered my carbs even further, looking for my sweet spot, but that's about it.

I've been in maintenance for two years now and my diet has been anything/everything I like, but in smaller portions (along with 16/8IF). I haven't kept a food journal since I made the transition and have been able to keep within my maintenance range (120lbs-125lbs) pretty effortlessly. However, over the past couple of months I've started seeing a creep and yesterday I was at my highest weight in two years, at 127lbs. That doesn't seem like a lot-but looking at my stats (I weigh daily and keep track in a phone app), I've gained 4 actual pounds in a pretty short period of time. I'm back into weight loss phase to lose the bounce, and I'm also exploring lc/going grain free to see if it helps with some annoying health issues I'm having.

As a teen, early 20-something, riddled with eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, laxative abuse, exercise abuse, etc.).

Gained 70 lbs during pregnancy (age 23), and promptly lost 55 of that in 9 months after giving birth.

As a 20 something - 30 something, ate pretty well, but lots of starches, and stayed fairly active and at a reasonably healthy weight (slightly overweight).

As a mid-30 something onward, health problems derailed me into depression and cyclical binging looking for comfort. My weight was pretty high during most of this time, and tipped over into obese in 2011. My binge of choice was sweets (particularly ice cream and golden oreos) and bread, bread, and more bread. I also naturally eat too much. I have a very large appetite and seemingly no "full signal".

Now, I eat LCHF to lose weight (I'm pretty much at goal), and I will continue to use this as maintenance, by slowly increasing cals and carbs until I hit a place where I start gaining again. I will keep a range of 140-145 lbs, I think. I would like to lower my BF% just a tad, though, so if I end up weighing more as a result, I won't let it bother me.

tiffanycherie wrote: »

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.

This would definitely be my story. I'm a jeckle and Hyde kind of person. Either I'm militant bout healthy eating, or making frosting just to " taste" it, better I just put that sugar monster to death and go very low carb.

I grew up lower middle class. My dad was the first person in my family with a sit down job (after a fashion). My parents were children of the depression. Dad was a WWII vet.

I was raised in the 60s and 70s on: convenience foods. Plain and simple.
My mother hated being a SaHM. (but didn't want to work, either)

breakfast: cap'n crunch or instant breakfast
lunch: school lunch, or a wonder bread bologna/"cheese" sandwich with a twinkie and a coke
dinner: something frozen (chicken and dumplings, meatloaf) or canned (green beans, creamed corn, chicken a la king) or both
snacks: cans of coke were readily available as were hostess products

Actual PRODUCE? That was something grandma or an aunt fed us when we saw them. There were NO fresh vegetables in the house. EVER, save the occasional red "delicious" apple that no one ate, giving mom the chance to say "why would I buy it, no one eats it".

I distinctly remember an aunt teaching me what green beans were when I was in elementary school.
They seemed exotic.

Things like yogurt were not allowed (bacteria!).
orange juice was a "waste of money"

Mashed potatoes? boxed
vegetables? canned
entrees? frozen

fast food? whenever we could afford it.

My mother believed everything the media "fed" her about food.

college: eating as close to that as possible, given my lack of cooking skills, with "food" introduced/cooked by others on and off. Horizons broadened!
Grad school: my food introduced by others, more restaurant eating, but still convenience foods were the staple when left to my own devices. Horizons further broadened!

This continued until Jan 2001. I decided to learn how to eat actual food, which meant I had to learn how to cook some foods. EVERYTHING changed. Then, a couple of years later I met hubs, who's a phenomenal cook.