shadowx1110's Journal, 01 February 2013

It sounds like your "treat days" may be effecting your weight loss. Are you tracking the amount of calories your taking in? If you take in too many it may effect the scale. If you need more carbs, try carb cycling. Having lower and higher carb days so you can get more variety in your diet. The one thing I have learned about is weight loss is that I will forever have to watch what I eat. I will never be able to go back to eat the way I used to. It's a struggle. Maybe you have been slacking too much with the treats. Maybe your overeating (yes, you can even on Atkins) from not tracking and it's showing on the scale. Find a way to re-motivate yourself. Take a new exercise class, buy a workout dvd and do it at home, get some fitness magazines. Try a new plan or new recipes. Anything to help you get to goal. Spring is coming and you want to look and feel great. You can do this. 

Hey Suzi thanks for the encouragment and advice. My "treat days" are actually few and far between, usually I reach a goal I set for myself before I have one. Here lately I have only used them to re-start my weight loss when I've stalled, it has helped before but now it's not. This will be my last one until I reach 200 lbs which likely won't be until May maybe later. I too know I will always have to watch what I eat but when I reach my goal weight, "treat days" will be something I won't throw away because to not allow myself to have anything I love anymore... well, I just know I wouldn't stick to this lifestyle. I'm often happy with a "treat" once every few months and I can enjoy it guilt-free when I've reached a goal beforehand. The holidays really spoiled me, I was not on my diet for them and I guess it pushed me into missing that lifestyle. Sorry but I'm just not going to stay on my diet for the holidays and have ppl feel sorry for me and my puny dinners or try to accomodate my diet lol. I was on my diet on days in between the holidays, but holiday get-togethers with family often times is not on the actual holiday... which requires more days of not being on my diet. So that on-again off-again made it possible for me to lose weight I gained, just in time for me to gain it back for another family get-together LOL. It's just that time of year. Even though I haven't been tracking what I eat, I still eat the same portions and the same things I ate when I was tracking. I haven't changed that routine or my recipes at all so I'm a little perplexed at what it could be. It's just embedded into me now what to eat and when to eat as I've been doing this well over a year. I was even losing quite a bit of weight steadily when my exercising activity went down. I'm going to use this time to re-evaluate what I'm doing, whether it be not enough exercise or whatever, it's only pushing me to experiment and try something else to find out what's not working, as I've done many many times before. It still stresses me out, though... because although I'm not going back to the way I used to eat when I reach my goal, I'm not going to keep eating induction food forever. I have to have whole grains and fruit in my diet due to having diverticulosis, the sooner I do that the better. I'm also tired of the monotony... you can only have so many casseroles and steak and chicken etc, made a plethora of ways (believe me i go looking for recipes all the time)... I still get tired of it. There's really only so much you can do with meat, veggies, and a little dairy lol. Anyway thanks again for your support... I'll be doing my best in my own way to figure this all out. 

Shadowx, let me first congratulate you on losing about 120 pounds in less than a year and a half! You truly must be becoming a "shadow" of your former self! I completely understand how you can be just tired of doing this for so long.....it IS a long journey sometimes and I know I got discouraged from time to time too. A loss of a pound a day is certainly motivating, but I know that you're aware that a pace like that just can't last forever. I think your plan to go back to recording everything is a great idea. Also, remeasure and weigh your foods, even if you're certain you know what everything is. Sometimes, just seeing things in front of us again make us spot something problematic. Give some thought to moving on to OWL.....AFTER you're solidly back on track for a couple weeks. OWL will give you some variety and shouldn't be a problem for you....as long as you follow the rules of OWL and don't get carried away adding all sorts of "legal" foods all at once. From what I've seen, the people who have problems moving into OWL are the ones who typically add all sorts of foods at the same time in larger amounts, instead of following the rules, going slowly, one food at a time. Good luck.