I'd like to start out - briefly - by saying that I finished the Atkins book I had been reading (yes, all 300 pages in only 3 days). It really was a good review of things I already mostly knew, and it gave me an idea of why, at my current age and overall status, it is so hard for me to lose weight (I have a slight metabolic resistance). It gave me a bit more confidence in my choice of "diet." Eating like this is something I can easily stick with, between home and work, without putting myself under much undue stress in terms of coming up with some type of food choice. My workplace is a great place for a low-carb dieter; we have gourmet cheeses and olives (one of my favorite work meals), a great salad bar complete with full-fat dressings, cheese, and boiled eggs, and sometimes the chicken on the hot bar is simply roasted without a lot of added ingredients.
So...vices. We all have things in our life that we "can't live without" when it comes to food. For my boyfriend, this would be Coca-Colas (and, more recently, Monster Protein drinks). For me, previously, it was carbohydrates in general...and currently it is "grazing." I am a bored/emotional eater; I will, especially when at home, veer towards the fridge at random times whether I'm hungry or not and eat. It's a really terrible habit that is easy to avoid at work (I'm too busy to eat all the time like I can at home), but on my three days a week that I am off I seem to find the fridge in front of me more often than anything else. My FIRST WEEK'S vice that I want to bust (see next paragraph for explanation of this) is my grazing -- instead of EATING something when I peek in the fridge, I am going to pour myself a glass of water and drink it instead. :)
I am starting to read (well, re-read mostly since I've read a lot of it before) The Vice Busting Diet by Julia Havey. I do not like some of the messages she sends (extreme focus on cutting calories and fat being the major point of contention compared with what I personally feel is a more successful route of eating), but I do like the motivational and methodical points the book promotes. Julia is a very vivid writer and motivator, especially since she lost 130 lbs. herself over a few years' time. I personally do not have that much to lose - my immediate goal is about 30 lbs, with 65-70 lbs being a very long term goal. I think that, using what I've learned both from Ms. Havey and Dr. Atkins will serve me pretty well. The Atkins Diet is a good food plan for me, but I do need more discipline and direction in terms of a way to cut back positively, which Ms. Havey outlines very well in this book she has written. Each week you are to either eliminate a vice or add a positive routine (i.e., some type of working out session) to your schedule and continue adding on as time goes by. This gives a gradual increase to the "new" things, which helps you avoid being overwhelmed.
The main issue, beyond my "grazing" is my lack of physical exercise. My body adapts well to cardio, but in the past when I added jogging into my routine I found my right knee was not able to support it with my higher current weight (in high school I was very good at endurance running, but I also weighed between 165 - 180; my current weight is 230). When I can afford it, I really want to own some sort of exercise machine like a exercise bike or treadmill. Beyond the negative impact on my knee, the weather in the area in which I live is not very friendly in the summer months (100+ degrees with high humidity on a regular basis). I would be more than willing to give up 30 minutes a day to get some cardio in if it didn't involve hurting my knee and dying of heat stroke!
And, lastly, I am thinking of taking advantage of my job (I sell supplements in a natural foods market) and get samples of some of the diet products we sell. I am not talking about just "any" diet products, but I would prefer to get samples of things with multiple clinical studies done on them such as the Fucothin Green by Garden of Life and Super Citrimax in our own private label brand. They both contain popular ingredients (garcinia cambogia and green coffee bean extract), but they also both contain other ingredients that have had some serious science and years of success behind them (fucoxanthin in the first and chromium in the second). I figure, since I'm well into the changed lifestyle with little to no carbs daily, it's about time that I start putting more things into me that push my metabolism a little more in my weight-loss favor.
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