The Journey of a Thousand Miles begins Beneath One's Feet

It is difficult to know where exactly to begin.

I know that I weighed nearly three hundred pounds in high school. I say nearly because I wouldn't have gotten on a scale if you'd paid me. I know that I was at the very least 280, but was likely close to 300. I had steadily gained weight starting about the age of eight or so. In the seventh grade I broke my leg, and the doctor told my mother to put me on a diet. My mother, never believing that fat was bad for anyone, put me on a low calorie diet that was not a low fat diet too. I lost quite a bit of weight and was in a size 12, which is still pretty chunky but was an improvement. But then I was very hungry all the time, and the weight crept back on. The size 12 pants got tight, and then the 14s got tight, and before I knew it I was in a size 26 (in women's pants). I was teased relentlessly and called all sorts of names. I remember there was a girl who lost a lot of weight in high school, but I assumed that she did it by starving herself. Now I wonder if she hadn't done Atkins.

Some time after high school, I went to the mall. There were a pair of pants at PacSun that I liked. They didn't make them in a big enough size for me, and that's when I decided to really do something about my weight. Again, I did the calorie restriction, and I lost down to about 220 or so. You can only starve yourself so long though. And 1200 calories a day is starving. The reason why it works is because you are restricting carbohydrates too, and so your insulin is lower, and since your insulin is lower, the fat is let out of the fat cells. Things go so much better without so much hunger if you cut the carbs. And this is why I couldn't maintain the starvation diet. I really tried not to eat very much. My body didn't want to stay at 220 though, it wanted to go back up. I didn't understand why. My sister ate whatever she wanted and in whatever quantity she wanted, never counting anything and was a size 0, and still is now in her thirties.

I had never heard of Atkins, until I met my husband. His mother knew about Atkins since the 1970s. If you read my last post you'll know that I had never heard any of this and there was no internet as we know it now in the early 90s when I was in high school, so I had no way of knowing any of this. The doctors didn't tell me. No one told me.

I went on the Atkins diet in 2002 at the suggestion of my future mother-in-law. I lost down to 163 lbs. It was the least I'd weighed since I was in middle school and lost weight the first time. However, this didn't last. I went off to college in another state, and eating the cafeteria food I didn't gain fifteen pounds. I gained fifty and then some. By the summer before my senior year, my weight had crept back up to 240. I was wearing a size 44 in Men's Wrangler jeans. That summer I did a summer camp at the school for high school students. I was sorta like a camp counselor. We couldn't leave the campus to go anywhere, but we were permitted to go to the gym. With a couple of the other students I worked with inspiring me, I became a gym rat. It's the only time in my life I've been a gym rat. I worked out two to three hours every day. I stopped eating so much in the cafeteria, limiting myself to a small plate. Over the summer, I lost thirty pounds and was into a size 40 in Wrangler's. This was an improvement, but considering the amount I was working out and how much less I was eating over a two month period you'd have thought I'd have lost more, if you believe the mainstream nutritional wisdom.

My senior year was busy, and the weight crept back on very slowly. I took a job a couple of months after graduation, and before I knew it, I was pushing back into size 44 pants. And so again, I started going to the gym at our apartment complex, walking on the beach, eating healthy whole grains, and I managed to get down to about 200 pounds. And that was it. There was no going any lower. Through absolute willpower, I kept my weight in the 200-225 range for three years. I was so hungry, and the weight would creep back on and I'd fight it back off. I tried not to eat very much. I certainly didn't enjoy my food, and any time someone brought something like donuts I felt guilty eating even one. When you're 200 lbs and eat a donut, everyone looks at you like you're a glutton. Even if you nibble it.

In 2010, my mother-in-law sent me Gary Taubes book, Good Calories, Bad Calories and told me to read it. As I said in my previous post, I was angry. All this time the health authorities knew this. They KNEW that low carb worked to lose weight. Not only worked, but kept the weight off. I'm still pissed. I wasted years of my life trying to lose weight. At this point I was close to 225 lbs, again.

I didn't really want to do low carb. It meant giving up food that I liked. In the end though, one has to decide what they like more. As I said before, I have a casein allergy. Things have been given up for that too. When you decide that it's worth it, that you'll feel better not eating the foods you like, and that there are plenty of tasty low carb foods, then it's not so difficult to do. The low carb helped me immensely but because of the dairy allergy, by itself it wasn't a panacea. My husband dropped weight on low carb like it was going out of style. I on the other hand, got stuck, and began to question the validity of all of this. It's valid all right. I believe that if it doesn't work for someone, if they're not cheating on it - as this is not a diet you can cheat on, then there is something else wrong with them. If you've tried low carb and I mean really tried it and you got stuck in a plateau and you couldn't break it, I'd look into other metabolic or food allergy problems.

To be continued...