Diet

I have a digital body weight scale. I bought it many years ago. I use it frequently to track my weight, and so I know that my weight has been going up, up, up. Two months ago, my weight was 215 pounds, so I decided to go on a diet.

Now, after two months of dieting, the scale says my weight is 201 pounds. I thought that I would put on a few pounds after the trip to Roanoke and after eating a lot of carbs (Subway sandwich, Brambleton Deli sandwich, spaghetti (twice), but my weight held at 201. I've lost one or two inches around my waist. The pants I've bought over the past year were size 40 waist, and I'm probably a size 38 now, because without a belt my pants fall to the floor. And yet I'm still overweight so there's more to go.

"What is my diet?" you're asking. Mostly, I'm staying away from carbs. Did you know that there is a diet called the "carnivore diet" which consists of eating only meat? It sounds unhealthy, but there are people who are on that diet every day and they are healthy by any medical yardstick. Their weight is good, their energy level is good, their cholesterol is low, and so on. 

I started off on the carnivore diet, helped by Nuria's birthday gift to me of a freezer full of Omaha steaks. But I am too old and too "programmed" to eat nothing but meat, so I added a salad. Then I added a green veggie, like broccoli or asparagus. Sometimes Nuria has a baked potato with her dinner, and I may eat half of her potato. I may even put butter or sour cream on it, which are fats, not carbs. I also skip a lot of meals. If I'm not hungry, I don't eat. If I am a little hungry, I'll eat an Atkins bar, which is very low in carbs and satisfies my appetite.

I try to keep my daily food intake at or below 1200 calories. The fewer calories I consume, the faster I lose weight. I want to burn body fat ("old food"), not burn "new food" that I just put into my stomach. When I eat, I don't continue to eat until I feel full. I decide what I'll eat and I stick to my decision. Sometimes I'll get a little hungry, but I never get very hungry. That's because I avoid bread and simple carbs. 

Simple carbs consist of long chains of sugar molecules. When you eat simple carbs, your stomach acid quickly breaks those long chains into individual sugar molecules, which your stomach immediately absorbs. That quickly raises your blood sugar, which is not good, so your body dumps insulin into your blood to force the sugar into fat cells. Unfortunately, that causes your blood sugar to quickly drop below the hunger threshhold, so after two or three hours you are hungry again, even though you just had a meal. Go to a Chinese restaurant and order a rice dish. Eat the rice and you'll feel full, because your blood sugar rises. But soon, you'll feel hungry again.  On the other hand, if you eat meat and green veggies, your blood sugar rises more slowly and not as high, so you don't feel overly satiated and you don't get hungry two or three hours after you've eaten.

So low carb/no carb and eating small meals is my plan, and I'll let you know how it works out. Good luck to all you dieters out there, and keep to the plan. It's so easy to give up, but you can succeed, and you will feel better and look better, and you'll be healthier, too.