Moabnuts diary

Moabnut.....
Hey there!
Just wanted to write and say hi. I did the Atkins diet as well for about a year...I lost about 30 pounds but always felt not quite healthy....a little weak most of the time. But I do know people who are thin as rails and it has really worked for them in the long term.....what I remember about it is craving fruit for probably the first time in my life....I would have traded a Snickers for an orange...no problem!!
Anyhow hang in there - and people are hearing you so keep posting!
 
I have been hearing about the glycemic index, but have never really understood exactly what it meant. So is that the basic difference then? No starches, but veggies is a go?

I am just following a low calorie diet with exercise, but I have cut out my breads for the most part (I do use a low cal. bread for lunch) and cut out potatoes and pasta altogether. The one thing I have noticed over the past six weeks is that I really don't crave breads and pastas like I used to. I was a big bread and pasta eater! But now I can make pasta dishes for the family, and I am not nearly as tempted by them as I used to be.

I did like the splurges that Atkins allowed. That no guilt feeling of being able to eat eggs in butter, and having cheese and meats without having to worry. But, then that started making me wonder too. Seems like so many of those foods were just sky high with fat. I don't know. I did lose weight, but I just didn't see it as a diet I could stay on forever. And once I went off...the weight came right back on. Hopefully what I am doing now will be a long term solution for my weight problem (fingers are crossed).

Btw, I love your favorite bumper sticker. lol. I may have to try that on the kids next time the argue with me over something silly. Keep up the great work! :)
 
Hey Fluff and Punky,
I kinda think of the Atkins diet as a starvation diet. Your body’s metabolism is working the same either way. On Atkins, you are living off other animals tissues, with starvation, your living on your own. Atkins is better than starvation because its protein sparing…as in; you save your own protein. Most of the time, even fasting we are not burning much of our own proteins, though we are constantly recycling them. Our bodies don’t like to use our own proteins for energy. You get week on Atkins because you don’t have any glucose stores and you are living on ketones (fat products). We live on ketones just fine and we do it all the time, we are just not used to doing it exclusively. Our bodies move much faster on glucose. No glucose ? slow ? tired. The most interesting thing about Atkins is that what we think of as fat products in our blood (triglycerides) actually go DOWN on Atkins. A lot of people don’t understand that, but its good for your fat profile. Weird, I know. Atkins works, no doubt about it, but I like a few carbs now and again. Women don’t seem to fair as well on it as men though. Much weaker and nauseated….in my experience anyway.
As for the glycemic index, the best way to think of it is; how fast can your gut break it down and get it in your blood. The faster it is, the more glucose (blood sugar) in your blood. This is bad because when we overload on glucose, your pancreas has to kick out a ton of insulin to get the glucose out of the blood and into your cells. Extra glucose ends up in fat cells. Plus we easily overload on insulin and our sugars take a dive under what they should be….then you get hungry and eat more, it’s a bad cycle.
Starch chemical structure is just glucose chains, flour is pure glucose. Its best to think of flour as pure sugar, cause that’s how your body sees it. In fact, lb per lb pure flour will raise your blood sugar nearly 2 times faster than pure table sugar. Because table sugars chemical structure is Glucose-Fructose. Only ½ glucose, pure fructose has a glycemic index of 20 (low) There are some things about Fructose that I do not understand though, I do understand that its got its own sets of problems.
The point is starch is sugar, the faster a starchy food can be broken down, the higher the glycemic index. White bread has the highest glycemic index because it is pure starch and easily broken down. Noodles are the same chemically as bread but not quite as easy for your gut to break down because their compacted. So its glycemic index is lower (but still high) Veggies don’t have much starch in them and are very hard to break down so they have a very low glycemic index.
One other point is glycemic load which is kinda a new concept. But it takes the glycemic index and adds in TIME as a factor. If you have a food with a lower glycemic index, even though it is high in glucose, it just takes more time to get it out. It has a high glycemic load. Its kinda confusing I know, and I cant say that I fully understand it anyway.
Holy crap this is a large post. I better shut up. Later :cool:
 
Oh Fluff, BTW. The studies show that rebound weight gain is about the same comeing off any diet weather it be Atkins, WW, Fasting, South Beach or any other diet. Your fat cells stick around, they just shrunk...and they are hungry. You MUST keep your weight under control for a LONG period of time after weight loss for your fat cells to decrease in number and increase in size (you want fewer, but happier fat cells) if you return to old eating habits you will be feeding your starving fat cells and they will grow. The faster you lost weight, the more fat cells you didnt get rid of. Slow weightloss usually keeps it off better because your fat cells are constantly adapting and dying. if you lose fast though and keep a tight hold on your weight for a year or 2 it wouldnt be so easy to gain it back. later
 
Thanks for the explaination! I had just never had it explained to me before, and its nice to finally get a gist of what they are talking about all the time when they mention the glycemic index. I have never thought about flour basicly being the same to our bodies as sugar. Wow. Stinks too. I could live a very satisfied life on bread and pasta...lol. Veggies are good though, and I am incorporating them more and more into my diet.

I really really don't want to reagain this weight. I am trying to do it slowly. My goal is to try to lose 40 pounds within this year. I hope I can do it. Coming to this forum is great, because it gives me a chance to talk with other people who are trying to do it too. This place is my support system. :)

Thanks again! :) Hope you are having a great day.
 
Keeping the weight off can be just as hard as losing it in the first place! People have told me that I have the largest weight swings of anybody they have ever known. I get determined to lose weight, and I do it. Ive lost 30 lbs more times than I can count. Problem is Ive always gained it back plus added some more. 1.5 years ago I was 200 lbs and running 4 miles a day, plus lifting, I was down from 235, the highest I had been was about 240. 2 months ago I weighed in at 280 lbs, now Im 247. I always get comfortable around 200 lbs and start slacking, but this time Im pushing for at least 180, maybe 160 if I start running marathons. That is my true goal, Im happiest when Im running so my goal now is to be LIGHT, not just look good. I look fine at 200, now I want to be light so I can really run. If I can do that I might be able to keep it off. Crossing my fingers. Im taking this diet totally different. Im still losing fast which is a good/bad thing. But the biggest thing is I am keeping track of EVERYTHING. I write in this journal, plus I have one of my own too. Its a little more personal, but I have every calorie accounted for. I chart my exercise, calories, weight, blood pressure, and pictures. Im trying to have miantenance days that will be like my diet should be after I lose the weight. I practice going out to eat to eat well. Im trying to prepair myself for the time Im NOT trying to lose weight (has there ever been a time?) I keep myself occupied with it so that I wont let myself down later because Ive put too much work and time into it to let myself fail. Ive got more to lose than I have ever had and my goals are loftier. Talking and reading about it on this forum really helps to keep me motivated. Ive always kept my weight loss stuff to myself before, this has really helped, and I hope to be able to help others too. Anyway, my kinda point was basically to say that you should really have a plan for maintaining your weight later, not just say: "wahoo, I made my weight goal! Now where did I place all that candy I was saving for later?" Anyway, good luck
 
Yesterday and Today I stayed within my calorie range. I didnt work out yesterday because I was too busy, but today I did 45 min on the elliptical and 20 min on the treadmill. I ran for 7. I try not to run too much because I will take it too far too fast, then Ill walk (or limp) away with a hurt knee. I want to have knees for a long time so Im slowly going to start increasing running as the weight comes off.
I think Im going to start adding more fruit in my diet. Ive kinda avoided them because I didnt want to bump my glucose up too fast, but I did some research today and found that cantaloupe, peach's, strawberries and watermelon are not too calorie dense so Im going to start eating them. In the veggie group I was surprised to find that peas and corn were about as bad as potatoes! (cal/oz) But on a good note, tomatoes are much lower calorie than I had thought. I LOVE tomatoes! Cherry tomatos are the best. Weighed in at 245 this morning...Im feeling the progress...and it feels good :cool:
 
It's nice to see someone who writes a lot, you diary is very interesting so far. That stinks about the kinda people you work with, even more if they won't help themselves. :( I had gestational diabetes but it went away right after my son was born, I'm not huge but the doctor most likely in my life I would get it. I normally stay to the low glycemic foods in fear of getting it again cause testing yourself for your sugar levels ain't fun! Good luck in your weight loss and thanks for being entertaining!
 
Thanks Meshellibel
Yes, I tend to write a bit much. Im glad someone enjoys it. When I read some journals, I skip through the long ones.
Your doctor is right, gestational DM is a major risk factor for DM type II. You should watch that carefully and follow up with your doctor if you have any high sugars. You can buy a glucometer at Walmart pretty cheap. The strips cost quite a bit though. At your weight, you shouldn’t have too much to worry about right away though, and you may never develop DM if you are careful. Muscle cells and fat cell are what need insulin. If you exercise on a regular basis, your muscle cells will not become insulin resistant so easy. And you are also on the right track with low glycemic index foods. Everybody should be careful, but your at a bit higher risk so you should be even more careful.
I was rotating with a doctor recently and we were talking about diabetic patients. We talked about exercise and diabetes. I asked how many of his patients cured their DM with lifestyle change. He said in the last 5 years or so he has had about 3 males and no females cure themselves. He said that lifestyle change can CURE diabetes type II in nearly 100% of the cases. The problem is nobody does it.
We also talked about why some men and very little women do it. I have also read up on this some too. Im in a female dominated forum, but please don’t take this sexist or anything. Females are much more happy than men to take pills to help their problems. So they are less likely to change bad habits to cure DM because they are taking care of it with pills. Men are bull-headed and are more likely to change bad habits to solve their problems, and do anything to avoid taking pills. In addition to that, women are more prone to diabetes than men.
Im still a young idealist medical student and I feel that doctors do not tell their patients enough about the benefits of lifestyle change. They don’t because it very rarely helps. Its very discouraging to tell people over and over again how they can take control of their health and nobody does it...so you give up and just write a script for glucophage. On that particular rotation, I got to take care of all the diabetics and hypertensives that came into the office. I saw over and over again peoples eyes glaze over when I talked about lifestyle modifications. When I saw them on follow up visits, they had either done very little or nothing to take charge of their health.
Those stories about my patients with DM are nothing new...happens every day. Of course, medical students and residents get all the uninsured, non-compliant patients who don’t care. I hope all who read my rants will take a little take home message. Though, I do feel like Im preaching to the choir when Im ranting to people who ARE taking control of their health, and for that I applaud you. I hope to never meet you where I work. That’s a bad thing! :cool:
 
The last couple days Ive had some of those WW smart ones dinners from Walmart. They are pretty good. I wont eat any of the 200+ calorie ones, but I had the pot roast one at 170 and the sweet and sour chicken at 140 cals. They are pretty good. I make a killer stir fry for me thats about 190 cals and these were just as good...almost. They are a bit pricy though, but how much are you willing to pay to lose weight right?
I figure people spend tons having the bariatric surgery done so they cant eat much, they end up only eating 500-700 cals a day for a year and lose TONS of weight. Why would someone go through that surgery to only be able to eat so little instead of just going on a VLCD without surgery? Doctors will very rarely tell a patient to eat under 1200-1500 calories because if they did eventually someone will go anorexic and have health problems, then the doc gets sued and loses because everybody knows not to go under 1500 Cals. Thats crap if you ask me. But its within the normal standard of practice to do an vary invasive operation where some people DIE just to make it so people cant eat more than 500-700 cals/day. Something doesn’t add up here. I know that Im going to have a bunch of self proclaimed intuitionalists laughing at me, but thats just my opinion. As a disclaimer though, because I am NOT making suggestions for anybody but myself. You should never go under 1000 Cal/day without knowing exactly what you are doing, what foods you should be eating and what supplements you should be taking. Furthermore VLCD's are not for people under about 200 lbs.
Anyway, thats about enough for my controversial rant.
Today I went to the gym and ran for 20 min, walked for 12, then lifted weights for 35 min, then back to the elliptical for 30 min. Holy cow, that was my longest workout. Im totally beat, but I figure I have the weekend to recover so I should be good. Im going to rent some DVDs and chill, hoping I don’t get called in. :cool:
 
Sounds like you are still doing good! What you said about doctors not being so on it with their patients, my doctor is on it! He is telling me everytime I go in that I need to start taking care of myself, so I have been because those diseases that you were talking about run in my family. Also, about the calories, my doctor does tell me for my height and frame that I should be eating around 800 cals a day. Just to add in snacks of fresh fruit and veggies. This is my gyno, no my family doctor...go figure! I have a meter, I had to test myself 4 times a day when I was pregnant and still do occasionally if I start feeling funny. But, so far still healthy! :)
Sounds like you had a really great workout as well, I only wish I had the time and patience to do a long workout like that. My longest is probably 45 mins. Keep up the great work!
 
I also wanted to talk about the way docs dont seem to give much advice...tis true for me until now.

Im uninsured, but for me, its WHY I have to get healthy! I DO give a darn! I cant afford what possible diabetes and high bp can do to me! I have the high bp, and had the gestational diabetes, and KNOW I can get the diabetes later. I dont WANT it! I had a good friend lose two legs and even DIE from it! My father fights it now. Nooooo I have to do most of my studying online. I HAVE to keep fighting my weight. I have NO choice about exercise. Im at the age now where screwin off is going to literally KILL me! soo, I finally have a doctor who understands, and even charges me a little less for my visits. To me, she is an angel. She encourages me the whole way. She really does care!

This is a first for me. Ive NEVER had a doc who cared. Now that i do, Im not gonna let her go! I also recently found out my pap came out great! after a bad one a few years ago, THAT made me really happy!

Keep posting about stuff like this, because I for one like hearing it!
 
Well, I say its controversial because I read a lot of posts on here that go against what I know about physiology. My biggest grip is when people talk about your body going into “starvation mode” if you are under 1500 cals, and blaming that on why a person cannot lose weight. Then saying eat more and you will lose weight. While starvation mode is a true phenomenon, it works differently. For one, its to combat losing weight too fast. If you are not losing weight (if you have extra to lose) and you are eating 1500 cals, your body is not in starvation mode, its in maintenance mode. Drop your calories and your weight will drop. It’s a matter of physics really. We are not perpetual motion machines. We cannot run on nothing. Our bodies, to oversimplify it, are calculators. We have input (food), and output (metabolism, activity). If we are low on food our bodies will slow down our metabolism some, and you will feel tired. But if you eat normal, your metabolism will almost instantly return to normal. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, if you lost weight your can gain it back faster because of your unhappy shrunken fat cells.
As for how doctors view their patients. I see new doctors making a true effort, but a lot of old ones have just given up on their patients. How many times can you tell patient that they need to quit smoking and never see your advice taken. I don’t want to paint an untrue picture, but the reality is when a patient comes in with an obvious problem, most doctors will say stop drinking, stop smoking, lose weight etc etc… but they don’t put much effort into it because it really is the patients responsibility to take control, not the physicians. All we can do is bring it to light every time they come in. What’s funny is when someone comes in reeking of smoke and you ask them how much they smoke and they flat out deny it. There teeth, beards and fingers are yellow and they will still deny it. Its rare, but it happens.
I am glad to hear that some doctors will actually say you can go under 1000 Cals/day. I couldn’t imagine the patience someone would have to have to weigh something like 500 lbs and to lose only 1-2 lbs/week. It would take 3-4 years to get to 200 lbs. Im not saying that’s a bad way to do it, but nobody has that kind of patience. Most of us would give up long before then.
Because this is a journal, I guess I better say something about my day too. Today I went to the gym and worked out for an hour. I did the elliptical for 45 min and the treadmill for 15. I got blisters from running yesterday so I thought I should take it a bit easier and only ran for about 6 min. today. I want to wait till 220 to run exclusively, but I have the feeling I will be doing it earlier. I love running. :cool:
 
I really enjoy reading your diary Moabnut. It is so informative! There are so many theories on how to lose weight, sometimes I find it so confusing. One person will swear by one type of diet, and someone else another. How can people on these very low calorie diets keep from being hungry and bingeing?

Sounds like you're dong great with the exercise. Keep up the great work! :)
 
I like what you say about the calories a LOT. I think sometimes we forget that our bodies really 'talk' to us if we just listen! For a short woman like myself to eat 800-1000 calories isnt going to put me into starvation, unless Im eating five dingdongs for my food that day!:p But some days I dont WANT to eat more than that! Hey, I watch my kids...and how they eat. My 7 yr old is a prime example. Some days she wants heaps of chili, and sandwiches and bananas..Youd think shed bust! then a week later all she wants are a few raisins and some juice or something...half the calories she wanted last week! She is in tune with her body, and because of my own eating problems, Ive never told any of my kids to clean their plates or eat more or eat less.,I just let them eat what they need. Not too conventional, but then neither am I. Sometimes I cook sometimes we fend for ourselves. But seriously, you really hit the nail on the head about input and output. Ive never had ill effects from sometimes eating 800 calories for a couple days a week. never. And learning to listen to what my body wants is hard, but do-able.
 
Ive had a rough couple days. Ive eaten too much, I haven’t worked out in a 2 days and Ill Ive done is sit around all day. Its been great! I didn’t go overboard and order pizza and ice cream. I just went out to eat a couple times and ate light. I did pretty good actually. I ate off the WW menu at Applebee’s. I ate in the upper limits of my Cal/day allowance, but I feel like crap because I haven’t gotten to the gym.
I read somewhere that there’s like 3 lbs of water for every lb of glycogen stored. I eat very few carbohydrates and my glycogen stores are pretty depleted, but when I eat bread or anything high in carbs, I gain like 3-5 lbs of water weight. Its amazing how fast it happens. I don’t have to eat 3 lbs of food to gain 3 lbs of weight, its just water. I could see how this would discourage a lot of people. If you are on a low cal or low carb diet, its like you have to consider your true weight a few more lbs that what the scale says. That’s how it is for me anyway. I cant really say for everybody.
Anyway, tomorrow I will go to the gym. Today I really couldn’t because I was waiting for a very important phone call. The call came too late and I wouldn’t have gotten in much of a workout anyway.
 
Finally got off my fat butt and went to the gym yesterday and today. I didn’t do too great on my diet yesterday but today I did much better. I went to the gym and ran for 15 min and did the elliptical for 35 min. Burned like 900 Cal. My back is really hurting after running though. I don’t think Im ready to run a marathon quite yet. Im not used to having problems after a mere 1.5 miles running.
Im trying to eat more veggies. Im stuck on those off the vine tomatoes. They are so good. Ive also introduced more fruit in my diet too. Strawberries are pretty low in cals. Ive had oranges and grapefruit too but only half at a time. I don’t want too many carbs at one time. Half of the oranges I have are about 50 cals. I weigh them to figure calories. I know that’s a bit extreme but I like to keep pretty good record of my intake. My weight is finally starting to move again. I hate plateaus! :cool:
 
Went to the gym today for about 1 ¼ hours. I just stayed on the elliptical and burned 1310 Cals. We had some drug reps come into the GME dept. today. They of course brought some really good food that I couldn’t turn down. I did good though, I had a chicken salad with salsa and no dressing. It did have a bit of a dressing in it already but I don’t think it was really bad stuff. It came in a taco shell which I threw away of course. I think at most it was about 350 Cals. I put over 15000 steps on the pedometer. I thought that was pretty good.
This is day #48 and to date I have been to the gym a grand total of 21 times. That is 21 time I burned more calories working out than I ate in a day. Just by a crude estimate of my metabolism figuring eating an ave of 750cal/day (bad days included) and burning an average of 850 Cals every time I work out, and losing 26 lbs in 44 days, which is not counting the first 4 days I lost tons of weight (water).
Workout 17850 Cals
Intake 33000 Cals
Lost fat Cals 91000 Cals
Net Loss 106150 Cals (lbs lost in Cals + intake Cals – workout Cals)
Metabolism 2412 Cal/day
This is about 800 Cals/day off of my original estimate the 2nd week of the diet. The original one was a much better study. This could be due to my metabolism slowing down a bit, which is to be expected on a VLCD. But I dont think so because Im losing at about the same rate. I will have to calculate it more accurately another time when I have time. Ive lost about 5 lbs by exercise alone, according to the machines anyway. So many variables, its hard to know for sure. But it is interesting to find that my metabolism is around 2500 Cals (the recomended Caloric intake for an adult male) :cool:
 
This last weekend I had to work and I didn’t get to the gym at all. Yesterday I worked out at the gym for about 2 hours. I did 1 hour on the elliptical and almost an hour lifting weights. I was pretty beat. Ive done well calorie wise. Last week I ran for a half hour or so. My back was hurting after, and it’s still hurting if I run. I guess Ill have to keep putting running off until Im a little less….top heavy. Im fitting into most of my old clothes that I grew out of. 8 more pounds and I will beat my record on weight loss. When I was 21 I lost 50 lbs. Of course, I put it all back on plus some shortly after. But I did spend 6 months or so at a healthy weight. Im still heavier now than where I started that time. I did it all running, no dieting at all, though I found that I wasn’t eating as much anyway. This time I am exercising and dieting. :cool:
 
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