Self Sabotage - Arrgh now feel rubbish!

[bananaballoo]

Been low carbing off and on for many months, lost some weight but mainly do it because I feel so much better without a lot of carbs. I feel like I have more energy, clearer mind, less of an addiction to biscuits etc. So why or why do I just sometimes crack. Carbs last night for tea, toast this morning for breakfast and biscuits and pitta bread and other stuff for lunch.

Now sat here at 2 in the afternoon, feeling so sleepy and tired and thoroughly unmotivated to do anything this afternoon. I know this is what I will be like when I eat carbs (have done it a few times before) so why the heck am I deliberately trying to make myself feel this rubbish! Restart tomorrow. Just need to vent.

Hi! I feel your pain. I sometimes fall off the Wagon and get so angry with myself. Mine is always always on a weekend night... Accompanies my favourite program - and is brought on by thinking
Oh I deserve some wine!
Hey - I also deserve a take away!! It's Saturday night.
So I indulge. Then feel bloody awful.
I'm sure there's some deep issue here like a feeling I deserve what I want - or a loneliness or something to do with food as a treat.

I'm following a six days on, one day off low carb diet. It means, for one day each week, I can have a takeaway or pasta etc. It works very well when, as we did, we had family over for lunch. I could have the pavlova dessert I made plus a glass of wine without feeling bad about myself! I just went back to very low carb the next day, dropped dairy for the day and watched how much protein I had (it is part of the diet I am following) and the next five days I do gentler low carbing.

Esmum - do you still lose weight doing that? I would have thought that would take you out of ketosis all the time, or are you also doing low fat?

It does take you out of ketosis (using ketostix) but the very low carbing on the day after usually rights things within a day. I am using the dissidents diet by Dawn Waldron. Her view is that it can be hard to stick to a low carb diet when you're out with friends or just having a crappy day and sticking to it for six days seems easy compared to thinking you can never have bread or pasta or whatever your carb is. Plus her reasoning is that you can test which carbs are OK for you by choose one carb each and test how long it stays in your body. I know that rice takes two days get out of my system and back in ketosis but potatoes, even chip shop chips, are gone within twelve hours. So now I know, when I get into the maintenance stage, that I can have chips occasionally but that rice is a once a week treat or I will be dieting again! Dawn Waldron thinks that some of us are susceptible to carbs which is why, like her, some people on low fat and low calorie diets don't shift weight but low carb works easily for them so knowing which carbs cause the problems give you back some control in the future.

I am losing about a pound to two pounds a week at the moment and have been on it for about eleven weeks. First week I lost four pounds and it has been steady since.

I found out, when I mentioned the diet to my size 8 sister that she has been on a similar diet of her own devising for ten years since her third DS was born. She eats no/low carb on weekdays and carbs including wine at the weekends and hasn't changed weight by more than two or three pounds in ten years. Wish she'd mentioned it before!!

Oh blimey my tablet is having fun. The idea is to take one carb each week, enjoy it and measure how long you are out of ketosis...

Sorry, drip feeding this. Blame it on dinner time for a seven year old! The diet absolutely bans low fat, except on the day after the carb day. Then you cut dairy except for butter and oil for cooking. So black coffee etc.

Otherwise it is double cream, skin on chicken, full fat Greek yogurt and butter on everything plus I can have 20grm very dark chocolate each day and the weight is dropping! Marvellous!

If you are feeling that bad after eating carb heavy it suggests to me it might not be the carb, but the source of the carb that's the problem... You might be intolerant to wheat for example.

Next time you want a "carb-out" try a couple of baked sweet potato with butter... See how that makes you feel in comparison to bread/cake made from wheat...