How to Hold Onto Your Weight Loss When Challenges Get in the Way

You can't outrun the challenges in life

At some point in your weight-loss journey or, perhaps, once you reach the maintenance phase, you will be confronted with some type of resistance. Something will not be completely within your control.

The nature of Life is challenge, and challenge is no excuse for pigging out on carbs.

There is no such thing as non-disturbance.

No matter what you do, no matter what you try to achieve, life will be there with another challenge, another disturbance to oppose what you're trying to do.

If you set up a goal to achieve something, such as losing over 100 pounds of body fat, there is never an end to the path.

You never arrive at a destination where you can relax and let down your guard because once you whittle off the pounds, you have to keep going.

You have to take pre-maintenance and maintenance seriously.

You have to keep doing what you did to achieve the weight loss, altering it slightly, perhaps, but continue doing it for the rest of your life – if you want to keep those pounds off.

Maybe you understand that, but tend to slip back into your unconscious eating style when challenges present themselves.

I completely understand that.

Holding onto your body fat loss when confronted with challenges requires you to stay aware of what's going on around you and maintain perspective.

The nature of life on this planet isn't comfort and security.

If you expect to one day reach a point where everything is calm and peaceful 100-percent of the time, where people in your environment give you all of the attention and approval you want, where you never feel insecure and people always talk to you nicely, you're going to be disappointed.

That day will never come.

The nature of Life is challenge. You can't escape
challenges, pain, and discomfort.

The nature of life on this planet is challenge. And challenge us, she does.

So in this fourth post on how I lost over 100 pounds tweaking the Atkins Diet, I'm going to show you what I did to hang onto my body fat loss when confronted with divorce in 2001.

[This is part 4 in a multi-series about How I Lost Over 100 Pounds Tweaking the Atkins Diet. If you didn't read part 1, click on the above link and it will take you to the first post. There, you'll also find links to future posts as they become available.]

Create a Backup Plan Right Now!

If you don't have a firm backup plan already in place, you'll be more likely to slip into your old habits when an unforeseen challenge arises.

This is what happened to me after using Atkins 72, and again after having my first son. I went totally unconscious, as far as my diet was concerned, and as a result, I had to start completely over.

It is vital to know right now what you're going to do if you find yourself in a situation where you can't strictly adhere to your low-carb diet. That way, you can simply put Plan B into action, right away, instead of trying to wing it on your own.

Whether the problem is due to environmental circumstances or emotional trauma doesn't matter. If you can't eat low carb, you can't eat low carb. If you don't have time to count your carbs, you don't have time to count your carbs.

However, the alternative is not throwing up your hands, saying what's the use in trying, and then pigging out on a double bacon cheeseburger, a large order of fries, and a chocolate milk shake just because you can't eat low carb.

That's not a plan. That's self-sabotage.

That's giving that little habitual monster inside your head the power to control you.

Don't give that carb monster power over
what you eat! Use the principles of
pre-maintenance instead!

With a backup plan firmly in place, you won't lose control of the situation. Instead, you'll make slightly altered decisions that are a bit higher in carbs, but low enough to keep those ugly pounds from reappearing when you're not paying attention.

There are many different ways to implement a solid maintenance plan. Which one you choose will depend on your:

• personality
• the circumstances
• your taste in food
• and your personal degree of self-discipline

In the event of an emergency, you won't always have the time to slowly increase your carbohydrate intake to find your Critical Carbohydrate Level for Maintenance (CCLM), if you haven't done that ahead of time, as you could if you just found out that you were pregnant.

For emergencies or sudden traumatic circumstances, where dieting has to be immediately shoved further down the list of priorities, you might want to try a different approach instead of going the traditional Atkins route of returning 10 carbs to your diet, one food at a time, watching what happens, and adjusting accordingly.

For me, that alternative approach to Atkins Pre-Maintenance was a diet known as Sugar Busters.

What is the Sugar Busters Diet?

Sugar Busters is a low-glycemic eating plan that focuses on keeping your blood sugar balanced and insulin level low, similar to Atkins.

As the name implies, the four authors of the Sugar Busters plan blamed sugar consumption for the obesity crisis and believed that avoiding sugar, and all of its other highly refined forms, could help you overcome insulin resistance, drop the weight, and improve your health.

Their ideas originally came from a French book published in Europe by Michel Montignac called: Dine Out and Lose Weight: The French Way to Culinary “Savoir Vivre,” published in 1986.

The book showed the reader how to dine out and enjoy life without having to sacrifice the pleasures of eating.

Michel Montignac believed in keeping your consumption of the following items extremely low:

• beer
• sugar and other sweeteners
• white bread
• starchy foods
• milk
• after-dinner drinks
• sugary soda
• fruit juices

By avoiding what he considered to be bad carbs (anything above 50 on the Glycemic Index), you could ultimately lose weight without having to count calories.

In essence, he believed in the Insulin Hypothesis, due to the work of a Physician's Assistant named Crapo.

Crapo was a diabetes expert at Stanford University who was looking into the effect that carbohydrates have on blood glucose control. At this point in time, it was believed that insulin levels mirrored your blood glucose levels.

In 1987, Montignac published Eat Yourself Slim and Stay Slim, slanted toward the popular market instead of business executives who needed to eat out a lot.

By the mid 90s, when Sugar Busters was published here in the states, his books were easily available. Montignac had also expanded his business to include:

• energy bars
• breakfast cereals
• ready-made meals

and other sugar-free products. He had a number of:

• shops
• spas
• a magazine
• mail-order chocolate company
• a restaurant in Paris
• and even a nutrition institute

Many of his ideas are still popular today, such as insulin being a fat-storing hormone and that whole-grains are high in fiber, which slows the conversion of starch into sugar.

This slow conversion is why Montignac, and by extension Sugar Busters, allowed whole grains on the diet.

According to popular belief at that time, slow digestion of carbs allowed only a small amount of sugar to be forced into your body cells by insulin at any one time.

Today, science has shown that body cells do not need insulin to pull blood glucose into themselves, but the presence of insulin does encourage body cells to pull the glucose in quicker.

Since Montignac was highly influenced by the emerging diabetes science of his day, he also believed in keeping your dietary fats low, so butter and heavy cream were used sparingly and not in abundance as they are on Keto.

Cheese was allowed in small quantities, while root vegetables were not allowed at all. Neither was:

• white rice and corn
• white flour
• store-purchased mayonnaise
• maltodextrin
• aspartame
• instant coffee

And a host of other foods popular on Atkins.

A lot of the inconsistencies within the Sugar Busters approach, such as oatmeal and whole-grain bread and flour being okay to eat even though they are higher than 50 on the Glycemic Index, and odd behavior patterns like eating your fruit 30 minutes before a meal to prevent fermentation in the gut (except for low-sugar fruits like berries), were directly lifted from the Montignac book.

And so were all of the other principles and dietary restrictions.

After Sugar Busters hit the New York Times best seller's list in 1995, there was a legal battle between the Sugar Busters authors and Michel Montignac over violation of copyright, but I do not remember how that battle ended.

Sugar Busters, like Atkins, has evolved over the years, but when I found the book in the public library in 1999, the new-and-improved version had not been published.

My experience with the diet, like Atkins, is with the original version of the diet and not what it morphed into after the glycemic index was proved to be invalid.

Sugar Busters allows you two servings of
starchy carbs per day.

I found the Sugar Busters book fascinating, especially since it claimed that you could eat Atkins-forbidden foods, such as:

• 100 percent whole wheat or multi-grain bread
• brown rice or basmati rice
• sweet potatoes
• fructose
• all fruits except bananas and pineapple

and still carve off the pounds. Intrigued, I went online and found the Sugar Busters community.

For several months, I watched what they were doing and how their body was reacting to the Sugar Busters diet. I learned the weaknesses within the plan and how the Sugar Busters community had adapted the nutritional eating plan to be more friendly toward weight loss.

Like the original South Beach Diet book, the plan as presented in the book was more about weight management, and moving to a healthy lifestyle, so to lose weight eating that way, the plan had to be tweaked.

How I Tweaked the Sugar Busters Diet for Atkins Maintenance

In the original Sugar Busters book, there were no restrictions on the number of carbs you could eat, so many people didn't lose weight, even after being on the plan for several months.

This was partly due to our American lifestyle, compared to France, where the Sugar Busters principles originated. It's also because most overweight individuals here in the states have no clue what a normal serving size looks like.

In Italy, for example, 2 to 3 ounces of pasta is consider a hearty helping, (according to people born and raised there), while 2 ounces of spaghetti to an American is considered a skimpy dinner that needs several side dishes (like salad and garlic bread) to round out the meal.

A 2-ounce serving of pasta
is only 1 cup 

By the time I found the Sugar Busters weight-loss group online, they were already limiting themselves to 2 to 3 servings of starchy carbs a day, similar to the old Weight Watchers exchange plan, and many of them were eating way less starches than that.

In a nut shell, the Sugar Busters diet is a typical low-carb diet, based on the glycemic index, with the following changes:

• lean meats
• poultry without the skin
• all types of fish
• cheese and nuts in reasonable portions
• whole eggs or egg beaters, whichever you prefer
• low-fat or non-fat dairy products
• fruit eaten 30 minutes before a meal or as afternoon snack
• sugar-free ice cream
• sugar-free puddings
• sugar-free yogurt
• 2 slices of whole wheat bread per day OR 2 servings of starchy carbs
• 1 serving of brown rice, sweet potatoes, or beans/legumes 2 to 3 times per week

Non-starchy vegetables were unlimited, as was the meat, poultry, fish, and eggs. You didn't count calories or carbs. You just ate foods low on the glycemic index until satisfied.

When my life turned upside down, I immediately moved from Atkins 92 to Sugar Busters, while going through my divorce. Since I already knew the plan, what worked and what didn't, I personally did not switch to low-fat dairy products. 

I also did not remove the skin from my chicken.

I bought what I was used to eating and cooked what I was used to cooking: whole foods with a couple of products like mustard or mayo.

Trying to do something completely new while going through the divorce would have turned into a disaster. I needed a maintenance diet that I could do without having to think too hard.

The major change for me after switching to Sugar Busters from Atkins 92 was allowing myself 2 to 3 servings of starchy carbs per day, and some fruit in the afternoon. A serving of starchy carbs equals:

• 1/2 cup brown rice
• small sweet potato
• 1/2 cup cooked beans or other legumes like lentils
• 1 slice whole-grain bread
• 1 whole wheat tortilla

Due to the amount of stress I was under at the time, and my unwillingness to switch to low-fat dairy, I found it easier to just eat 2 servings of starchy carbs for 1 meal a day and keep the full-fat dairy. 

I also dropped from 3 meals a day, plus snacks, down to 2 meals because I wasn't hungry for breakfast.

Per day, I ate one of the following:

• a cup of brown rice
• medium-sized sweet potato
• whole-grain bread sandwich
• 2 pieces of whole-wheat bread
• whole-grain hamburger bun
• 2 small slices or 1 large slice of homemade whole-wheat pizza
• 2 ounces whole wheat spaghetti
• large whole-wheat tortilla
• 2 small whole-wheat pancakes or waffle squares

The 2 servings of starchy carbs were added to my typical Atkins 92 meals, of course.

I don't like beans, and wasn't used to cooking them when I was with my ex, and since corn was included in mixed vegetables at that time, my starchy carbs all came from grains or sweet potatoes.

I didn't start doing a cup of cooked beans until later on after I remarried. I also went back to 3 meals a day, but breakfast was very light: just a cup of sugar-free yogurt or a little cottage cheese mixed with chopped strawberries or blueberries that I ate at morning break.

How Well Did I Do?

Two servings of starchy carbs a day, one piece of fruit, and a little sugar-free ice cream two or three times a week, took my 35 carbs on Atkins 92 up to about 60 carbs a day, since I wasn't eating breakfast.

Although, I used 2 tablespoons of sugar in my homemade 100-percent stone-ground whole-wheat bread or pizza dough, it was thought that the yeast ate up the sugar during rising time.

I have no idea if that is true, or not.

This was supposed to be a maintenance plan, but it didn't really turn out that way.

Despite the high cortisol levels from stress and the starchy carbs and fruit, I continued to lose weight at a fairly rapid pace. 

I don't know exactly how much I was losing per week because I did not weigh myself during that time, but I know that I dropped a few clothing sizes over the next few months.

My wedding dress in 2002 was a size 18, a loose fit, and I remember that I'd lost enough weight for my co-workers to take notice and consider a low-carb diet for themselves.

I loaned one of them my Protein Power book, so she could read about the Insulin Hypothesis and other low-carb theories.

Once my life straightened out and the challenge had passed, I switched back to Atkins 92. Although, Atkins had come out with a new diet plan in 2002, I wasn't aware of it at the time.

I just returned to what I knew best: Atkins 92.

By 2003, I was down to a size 14. I had switched jobs, gone from home care to a workshop for developmentally challenged adults, and life was comfortable and serene.

That is, until the vertigo struck in the fall of 2003.

Part 5: How Vertigo Changed My Low-Carb Lifestyle - This post deals with my struggle to get a Meniere's Disease diagnosis and how vertigo affected my ability to stay low carb.