Due to my current success, once again, I now realize how important it is to zero in on individual food sensitivities and health issues. In my own case, due to the celiac, that would be protein/carb/fats malabsorption and dairy sensitivity (at least currently). I also have come to realize how important it is to actually use that information to put together a diet plan that works for you.
I did myself a very big disservice by listening to those on the internet who proclaimed to know, dumping what was working well for me, and running back to what I perceived to be the Atkins diet: a high-protein, high-fat, low-carb diet. But the only thing that did for me was cause me to stall. That's because, as a celiac, I do not metabolize dietary fats very well. And as a pre-diabetic, I tend to turn all excess protein into glucose.
The bottom line is that I haven't moved forward since then. From the very moment I started listening to others, rather than to what my own body was telling me, I began to struggle – inwardly, as well as physically. Chasing one new promise after another, one new diet after another, I never got anywhere because no matter which diet community you hook up with, the mantra is always the same: if you aren't doing it by the book, you aren't doing...Atkins/South Beach/Lyle McDonald's PSMF/Zero-Carb/Dr. Simeon's Protocol.
Just fill in the blank with whatever diet you're currently following, and the advice you will always get from those who have chosen to follow the groups leader/doctor/author is: you have to do it by the book to be successful. Regardless of your health problems and inadequacies, tweaking a diet as written is absolutely not allowed if you want to hang around with us.
What's unconscionable is that no one seems to care if you're losing your excess body fat, or not. The mantra still holds true, and is still preached because...well, you aren't really doing this for the fat loss, you're doing this for your health. No one seems to catch on to the fact that if you aren't getting rid of your excess fat stores, you're not actually doing anything for your health by eating low-carb foods.
I finally had to face that realization.
And that's when I also realized that to fix the problem, my problem, I had to seriously return to the diet plan that I know works for me. There really was no other way.
This morning I weighed in at 154.4 lbs – that gives me a total loss of 102.1 lbs since I started this low-carb journey, January of 2007. A major milestone, it firmly places me within the 100 lbs lost club. There was a time when I was struggling, trying to figure out how to make one of the various low-carb plans work for me, that I thought I'd never be able to finish the journey. That was true...for awhile. As long as I was listening to the low-carb community.
I suppose that for each of us who stalls in our journey, there comes a moment when an honest-to-goodness decision has to be made. For me, that decision came when my husband turned to me one day and said:
"The reason most people don't reach their weight-loss goals is because they aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to get there."
I would also add, that sometimes that sacrifice requires us to step outside of the low-carb diet box we currently find ourselves in. Whether that's adding more or less carbs than typical, or less fat and/or calories than typical for a low-carb diet, if we fail to make the choice that results in success then we've chosen to fail.
