Addiction

Hello. My name is Ponita and I am addicted to sugar.

Big time addiction. Sweets, breads, chips, donuts, fries... all those delicious high carb foods. I frequently eat those and forgo real food. I often have a voice in my head that screams like a toddler having a meltdown that makes me buy those cookies, or chocolates, or chips, when my logical brain is saying 'no! don't do it'. That voice often makes my logical self feel helpless. And it has made me about 60 lbs overweight (although being tallish means I can hide it a bit but the belly is getting pretty damn obvious when not wearing loose clothing and I am too old to be preggers). I have all kinds of aches and pains, I get completely winded if I have to move at any speed or am walking long distances at a pace faster than an amble. I huff and puff just bending over to do up my shoes (which is why I usually try to sit down, but even then I still huff a bit). I have a thyroid autoimmune condition and take medication for that, which has caused weight gain. Menopause has caused weight gain. Sore feet and a bad back, which limit my activity, have caused weight gain. I am about as flexible as a 2x4. And I am 61. I ain't gettin' any younger, folks. Time to bite the bullet.

So I decided enough is enough and began an internet search on changing my "way of eating" (also known as WOE) that doesn't involve an endless supply of rabbit food, caloric restriction, and exercising til the cows come home. None of those appeal to me, and they usually only work short term unless you are a mindless fanatic about sticking to it. Plus putting up with being hungry a lot.

Then I found a site called Diet Doctor. It is run by a real medical doctor, and has lots of science and medicine to back everything up. Not just another "diet", this is a way of consuming foods that keep you from feeling hungry, keep your blood sugar levels on an even keel (even if you are not diabetic, this is important) and recipes can be pretty easy to make with real foods.

It is low carb high fat eating. Yes, that sounds an awful lot like the Atkins diet, because it is. But not entirely. It is based on eating foods that keep our blood sugar and insulin levels as unfluctuating as possible, because that is what allows us to use our body's fat stores for energy, instead of the carbs we just loaded up on. It is not just all the meat and fat you want. It is how our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have eaten. I don't buy into the paleo thing simply because there are a lot of good foods around now that weren't way back then, and there is no reason to exclude them from our diet. There is a lot of healthy fat, moderate protein and very low carbs in this WOE. Atkins wat high protein and high fat. The fats do not affect your blood sugar or insulin levels at all. Keeping your carb intake really low also means they do  not have much of an impact on them and that is the key. The doc who started the Diet Doctor clinic (in Sweden) and website has been eating this way for over 15 years. As I said, there is a lot of science in this, the website has lots of videos from experts (read: doctors and scientists) given at medical conferences, not just made for the website, plus references for all that and that is huge for me. I need the science behind this kind of stuff. My medical training means I can understand most of what they are saying.

So I started 4 days ago. Let me tell you, when you start doing this, you pee... a lot! Switching from a carb burning machine to a fat burning machine generates a lot of water! That has already subsided a little bit, I weighed and measured myself on the first day, and then weighed this morning, because Sunday mornings will be the official weekly weigh-in day as I go. In those 4 days, I have already dropped 1.6 lbs. I know it is only water at this point, but the fact that I can pee that much out (and still be drinking lots of water each day, which has always been the norm for me), then I know all those carbs hang on to extra water within my body. Which is why a lot of people who have high blood pressure get off their meds and have their BPs normalize when they do this WOE. Even people who are type 2 diabetics can often come off meds too because with weight loss, blood sugars normalize. (I knew this tidbit already, and losing even 10% of your weight can make a difference for a diabetic, but keeping it off is key, right?)

I am sure I have metabolic disease, meaning I am a hair away from becoming a diabetic. I have had the occasional slightly elevated blood sugar with blood tests but my Hbg A1C (which shows blood sugar average for the past 3 months) have always been within normal (upper end, though) limits. I don't want to go there. I don't want diabetes to kick in. I don't want the health complications of that horrible disease and if I can get myself on track to lose the weight and get everything back down, then I will be improving my health and  life. I can hopefully look forward to losing body fat, feeling better, and having the ability to start being more active.

I have battled with my weight for decades. It's time to get a grip on it once and for all and get it down to a healthy level. And it's not even about what the scale says! It is about how my clothes fit, how many inches I lose, and how I feel, because those are the things that matter more. I took pictures at the start and I plan on taking pictures every month, wearing the same clothes. Some day, down the road, I may post pics for comparison.