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!!

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.

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.

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.

mwyvr wrote: »

No macro secret, just this picture.

That's amazing! You look 20 years younger!!

AngInCanada wrote: »

mwyvr wrote: »

No macro secret, just this picture.

That's amazing! You look 20 years younger!!

I was going to say the exact same thing! Cant believe how much younger you look.

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.

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.

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.

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.

deksgrl wrote: »

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.

I'm kinda this way too.
I lost weight by eating high quality carbs (pre- south beach, but very much south beach style). And I felt GREAT. I kept eating that way for 13 or 14 years, and maintained (+-5). And felt great. When menopause hit, I noticed that my old carbage cravings returned, and that I was giving in to them a bit.

I played around with things for a while, and nothing seemed to have me feeling "right".

I decided to re-commit to eating only high quality carbs, really eating them, the vegetables, and I tweaked back the overall total number of carbs. I'd done lots of reading on menopause and insulin resistance etc. But it hadn't really sunk in, not really, until a few months ago.

I'm feeling like me again.
It's funny, I had been doing this right for a while, and hadn't thought about it much, when I saw deksgrl's post about going low carb (we knew each other from another group here) and I thought: oh, yeah, hey, I feel like me again! When did that happen? Which got me to focus even more.

To put things in perspective:

about 12 years ago I stupidly decided to change birth control methods. I knew that BCPs didn't work well with my body, but stupidly listened when my (former) OBGYN suggested I try Mirena. "No systemic hormones" she said "all localized" she said. My rational brain couldn't see how that could be the case, especially given the listed side effects, but I did it.
Later, I was feeling HORRIBLE. I knew it wasn't for me (and wasn't "localized"). I called her and told her to get it out, or I'd do it myself. ha.

Four days later I CRASHED. HARD. It was like post partum depression and exhaustion. It was STUNNING.
I'd never felt like that before in my life. I was weepy, bitchy, twitchy, anxious, and I couldn't sleep. Nearly ran hubs out of the house. I quickly realized that I had no progesterone. Mirena provided the artificial stuff, so my body apparently stopped making it and it probably added too much, which then threw off my estrogen. I took out the Mirena and I was left with raging estrogen and no progesterone. oh joy. I got bio-identical progesterone and slowly balanced myself.

In late fall and in spring I told hubs that menopause had me feeling "post-Mirena" like. A few weeks after tweaking my carbs down, and their quality UP, I felt human.

TL;DR: I feel good eating my way. I feel bad eating SAD.

Dragonwolf wrote: »

wabmester wrote: »

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?

In my experience, the majority of people who fail did so because they did something wrong. Most people jump into low carb without getting even basic "101" education about it. As a result, they layer low carb on top of their existing low fat, low salt lifestyles, and (predictably, to anyone who understands how low carb works) end up feeling like crap by day 5 and dealing with cravings from hell. Their "I felt like crap" would have been transient, and would have been mitigated (or eliminated altogether) if they'd taken a little time to learn and troubleshoot instead of just giving up. (Having people like Dr. Oz say crap like "I tried low carb, I didn't last a day without feeling like crap!" doesn't help matters.)

My "secret," then, is educate yourself before diving in head first. Otherwise, you risk diving into the shallow end...

Barring that, the trick that allowed me to drop carbs without much of a struggle was to drop grains. Going Primal forced me to change my mindset about what constitutes a meal and that meals didn't require bread or pasta or whatever. Prior to that, I couldn't "figure out" how to get my carbs below 200g or so and struggled with meal ideas, because I was stuck in the old formula.

This is a great point. I just saw a thread where someone said they "tried" atkins but "failed" because they like vegetables and "vegetables aren't allowed" on atkins. dafuq? Clearly she just dove into "bacon" and didn't take time to read up on the plan she was supposedly doing.

And, yes, it does require a bit of a paradigm shift. We've been amazingly brainwashed, these last years, to assume that bread, pasta, cereal are the center of every meal. It's not a meal without grains we're basically taught and told.

Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »

Dragonwolf wrote: »

wabmester wrote: »

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?

In my experience, the majority of people who fail did so because they did something wrong. Most people jump into low carb without getting even basic "101" education about it. As a result, they layer low carb on top of their existing low fat, low salt lifestyles, and (predictably, to anyone who understands how low carb works) end up feeling like crap by day 5 and dealing with cravings from hell. Their "I felt like crap" would have been transient, and would have been mitigated (or eliminated altogether) if they'd taken a little time to learn and troubleshoot instead of just giving up. (Having people like Dr. Oz say crap like "I tried low carb, I didn't last a day without feeling like crap!" doesn't help matters.)

My "secret," then, is educate yourself before diving in head first. Otherwise, you risk diving into the shallow end...

Barring that, the trick that allowed me to drop carbs without much of a struggle was to drop grains. Going Primal forced me to change my mindset about what constitutes a meal and that meals didn't require bread or pasta or whatever. Prior to that, I couldn't "figure out" how to get my carbs below 200g or so and struggled with meal ideas, because I was stuck in the old formula.

This is a great point. I just saw a thread where someone said they "tried" atkins but "failed" because they like vegetables and "vegetables aren't allowed" on atkins. dafuq? Clearly she just dove into "bacon" and didn't take time to read up on the plan she was supposedly doing.

And, yes, it does require a bit of a paradigm shift. We've been amazingly brainwashed, these last years, to assume that bread, pasta, cereal are the center of every meal. It's not a meal without grains we're basically taught and told.

Ugh! People.

Mami1976D wrote: »

I suddenly realized I'd been eating like Cookie Monster for over a year, downing donuts, cookies, cakes, chocolates....

I call my old diet the Hummingbird diet, because I'm pretty certain I was eating my weight in sugar and starch every day. ;-)

Starting in Junior High, I'd eat snickerdoodles and Sprite for breakfast, have a pocket full of Skittles so I'd have a steady stream of sugar all freakin' day, and eat crap or PBJ for lunch. Dinner was the only meal where I'd eat real food, and we were definitely a meat and potatoes family, though there was usually a veggie.

For me, the turning point was deciding to talk to a chiropractor several (completely unrelated) friends recommended. Turns out I've been reacting to more foods than I realize, which is why gluten-free wasn't enough to keep me healthy (I was still eating a ton of processed foods as well). My diet is crazily restrictive for now until my system starts to heal, but it'll be worth it.

AngInCanada wrote: »

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.

This is totally me- word for word!