I’m done with Atkins and with Paleo! Can’t do it anymore! The last few days even though I didn’t have any actual physical cravings as such I just can’t stop thinking about all the yummy food I want to eat. I don’t mean junk food – I mean real, wholesome food. Honestly if wheat & rice are going to kill me off 10 years early or whatever then fine, I’ll take the tradeoff because I am a foodie! I have shelves packed full of cookbooks that I actually use, I watch food channels on TV and I even want to do some food related road trips! I can’t eat this way for the rest of my life. I feel so much better now I said it!
What brought on the change of heart?
Breakfasts have been fine, lunches mostly ok but I have still struggled with evening meals because I don’t like many of the traditional vegetables. Therefore most evenings I’ve been hungry some hours after dinner and the only snacks I can eat are meat, cheese & eggs and that just feels wrong! It just doesn’t feel healthy to have a high calorie, high fat snack when I could have some fruit, or better yet not be hungry after dinner in the first place. Okay I could have the fruit on Paleo but I still can’t eat any of my staples.
Last night I cooked my partner a pork dish with special fried rice made with whole grain rice and packed with lots of veggies. I was looking at that and looking at my own meal which was a beef stew and honestly the rice dish seemed healthier. Later in the evening I snacked on some pork scratchings which did not feel healthy at all. I think that’s when I made the decision to stop but I was planning to slowly ease myself back in but I guess willpower got the better of me and I added some of that wholegrain rice to my lunch today so it ends now!
I’m going to consider the last 7 weeks an interesting experiment, take what I have learned and move forward from here. My goals have not changed but my methods certainly will do.
Results recap so far
My first week of Paleo I dropped almost 4 lbs then it stalled. I had Christmas & New Year to deal with so I’m actually pretty pleased I at least stayed the same. When I started Atkins last week I dropped just over 3 lbs in that first week but this week the scale has barely moved. I have weighed myself daily since starting and I know you’re not supposed to do that but by this time last week I was already 2lbs down and this week its about half a pound so it’s clearly not working. The book suggested that weight lost in the first few days would be water weight and then as the body adapts to burning fat that will be dropped next. It would appear to still be working, but slowly. It simply is not worth the effort and restriction. I actually had to cook separate meals for my partner and also eat separately from friends last weekend which did NOT feel good. I refuse to live this way.
What has changed for the better
These last few feeks have not been a waste though. I’ve dropped half a stone over a period of the year when I would usually put on as much. I have increased my vegetable intake hugely and introduced new veggies into my diet. That feels good, that is staying! I have dropped virtually all sugar and I have truly felt the benefits – no cravings, no nagging feeling of constant hunger (only genuine hunger in the evenings), heightened taste buds. When I had some cheesecake at a restaurant the other week just before starting Atkins my heart was racing for hours. I used to get this all the time and I hate it so the sugar is staying dumped! I’m not saying I’ll never eat sugar again but it will be a very rare thing on a special occasion only.
I have proved to myself that I can be strong (to an extent). Today is the first time I have eaten rice in 7 weeks. The same goes for bread & pasta with the exception of New Years Eve when I literally had no choice – it was starve and offend friends or eat it. I have proved to myself that I don’t need to snack all day long, and that I don’t need caffeine (I gave that up too), or sugar, or processed crappy junk food. One benefit of being a bit of a foodie is that I love real food – I enjoy cooking and so I never ate much processed stuff anyway.
So what now?
I’m fed up of following diets. There is so much conflicting advice. From now on I’m going to be on the ‘Caroline’ diet – I am throwing all rules out of the window and simply eating what feels good and right at the time! I will continue to track everything in detail as I have been. Incidentally, my calories on Atkins have been higher that before and as calories do matter this is probably why it has not been effective for me this week. Every week I’ll continue to monitor what I eat, how I feel, what my results are and I’ll just carry on or change things accordingly. I’m going to consider it an evolvement.
Some ideas I definitely want to take forward with me now are having lots more veg and a little fruit every day, cutting out the sugar and white flour products and still keeping carbs relatively low. But I will eat rice, pasta, some bread products as I did before. I am not afraid of fat but I don’t want to eat it in the quanties that I was on Atkins. I’d rather get a good dose of everything in each meal. One thing I really can’t be doing with is meal timing – only having carbs after a workout or before a certain time of day etc. I’m just going to eat what I want, when I want as long as it feels good. I’ll keep my fridge stocked up with lots of fresh veg so I can always make a salad, some soup etc so I have healthy food to have if I do need to snack.
I will NOT be restocking my cupboard with crisps, biscuits, pot noodles, chocolate chip brioche rolls (I used to have one of those every morning as a ‘pre-breakfast snack’!) or any of that rubbish.
Oh yes, I joined the gym!
On monday I joined a local gym and have used it twice so far and used it properly – yesterday I was in there for an hour and a half! I did about 30 mins of cardio followed by quite a bit of weight training. Another reason why I decided to stop Atkins in particular – the exercise should have boosted weight loss, it may have been non existent if I hadn’t started down the gym this week. I plan to go again Friday this week.
So, excersie and real food are the plan then. If my weight loss slows to a crawl as a result, so be it, at least I’ll be well fed!
The post I’m now on the ‘Caroline’ Diet! appeared first on Caroline Middlebrook (v3).
