Getting Back on the Wagon – It's Time!

Photo by: Joe Mabel

It's been months since I last climbed back into the wagon and attempted to go the rest of the distance to my weight-loss goal of 125 pounds. Not since I tried out a zero-carb diet in hopes of using it as a kind of elimination diet to get better control over my gluten intolerance. That bad experience took months before I was able to overcome the consequences of a runaway gluconeogenesis.

With my blood glucose finally back to normal (now that I've partially recovered from my flea-bomb fiasco), I came to the realization a couple of weeks ago that despite my kickin' and hollerin' against it, I really needed to just buckle down and do the type of diet that I know works for me.

While I was wishing and hoping a more moderate-carb diet would have worked (and it probably would have if my in-laws hadn't thrown a wrench into my plans, since that's the way I got the gluconeogenesis to stop), I had to finally face the truth: that a typical, high-fat, low-carb diet is not going to take me the rest of the way.


At which point the question suddenly became one of what are you going to do about that? I had been following a typical low-carb diet for a few weeks prior in an attempt to get my blood glucose levels back under control (which worked well all of a sudden, to my surprise) when I had to face that truth. The scale wasn't budging, hadn't budged, and wasn't going to obviously.

But gosh...lowering my fat intake and returning to chicken breast (which I can't stand) and other lean meats was not something I was looking forward too. I kindda wanted to keep my dairy addiction intact.

Still, I'd reached a point where I realized I was faced with only 2 choices: continue to tow the low-carb party line and stay fat, or move to a diet with a lower fat and calorie content, and see if my body was ready to give up the rest of its excess fat stores.

So after an unplanned weekend that my husband and I spent in Las Vegas (we went down there to help a friend of ours who was moving there), I returned to my own personalized diet plan. The plan I was following just before the Kimkins stuff hit the fan. The way I lost the greater majority of my excess weight so far. Yucky is putting it mildly; but at least it's working as well as it did then.

After our unexpected vacation weekend (where I'd put on a good 5 pounds due to the excess carbs; I consider it great if I can get her to understand no gluten), I started this diet round at 177.8 pounds. With all of that being glycogen/water, it came right back off within the first few days, plus more.

So my return to dieting has gone well. In fact, with my 3rd week almost behind me now, my weight is just above where it was when I quit and gave up on Weight Watchers due to my metabolism tanking. I'm just slightly above my set point, and my body is starting to go kindda wonky about that. The lowest I was able to go on the old Weight Watchers diet (back in the exchange list days) was 160 pounds.

Today I weighed in at 161.8, so I've crashed through my low-carb set point of 170; but as I head towards my Weight Watchers' set point of 160, my weight has been bouncing up and down all week. To be expected I guess, but no matter how long you've been low-carbing, you still keep hoping that this time, it's going to be an easy ride.