Looking back over entries from my old blog, I realized that I had written back then about doing Atkins and low carbing and such. I don’t roll that way anymore, and I’ll tell you why. Menopause. Menopause seems to be the reason I am now doing Weight Watchers and reading damn ingredient labels again. I had the carbs contained in every substance known to man memorized, so I never had to look at labels when I was low carbing. Fat is far more insidious though, so I am back to checking for it.
Low carbing worked for me for a long time, but the minute I got past perimenopause and hit the real thing, I was done for. And due to the fact that I have never seen a portion I thought was too large, I never got where I should be with low carbing anyway.
This past January, I decided to just step on the scale to see where things stood. I will not reveal here the number that confronted me, but suffice it to say that it was higher by about 30 than any number I had seen before. And I was not thrilled with the other numbers either, so this number was downright stunning.
So – I had to do something. The Christmas we had just spent at Ellyn and Jason’s confirmed for me that I was a fat Grandma. I could not easily get up and down to play legos or cars and it wasn’t all that easy to bend over and pick up a small person who wanted to give me a hug. My right knee throbbed like a rotten tooth anytime I had to walk up more than 4 or 5 stairs. We won’t even talk about how I looked, because how I felt was enough to spur me into action.
I pulled out my old friends, Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution and Dana Carpender’s Low Carb cookbooks and I went to town. I stuck to the culinary narrow path that leads to thin thighs and the daily exercise that helps burn fat. I lost 16 lbs in about 2 months which is pretty good. Then I just sat there. And sat there. For 3 weeks. Then – without changing a single thing, I started to gain weight! Over the next couple weeks, I gained back 6 of the 16 lbs I had lost.
Obviously, I had to do something. From Lowcarbfriends, a BB where I have been a member since 2001, I had heard of Kimmer and her Kimkins plan, so that was one option. Low calories, low carbs, low fat. I had had some success on it before, but it was not sustainable for me, so I kept looking.
Could it possibly be that I should try………. gasp! ………. Weight Watchers ? WW is not a welcome term to a die hard low carber. They are evil incarnate actually, with all the erzatz frankenfoods they market and the deprived, hungry feeling that is legendary. But still – what choice did I have? I looked for coupon codes to their website and found a 3 month deal for membership that should give me plenty of time to figure out if it would work for me. I went shopping for low fat foods – lean meat and veggies, plus some dairy like fat free yogurt. And fruit! Yummy! I entered all my meals and stayed in my points and ……………….. woooohoooo………..I lost weight! Steadily. Yay me!
I guess my 52 year old metabolism prefers a lower fat regime now. And I am still cautious about carbs because I feel like warmed over crap if I eat them very much at all. Like I did when I was low carbing, I cook most stuff from scratch and it is mainly fresh veg & lean protein. Now there is brown rice, some whole grain pasta, a bit of potato and occasionally I even bake a little low fat corn bread or something.
I am down 52 pounds and kind of maintaining right now. This point is where I have stalled so many times in the past and in the past, when that happened, I got discouraged and gave up. That is not going to happen this time. For one thing, with WW, even if you do fall off the wagon, getting back on is very easy and if you don’t stay off more than a day or two, you won’t even gain much, if anything. But for me, the choice is pretty clear – stick to what I am doing and eventually I will break through the stall, or give up and regain. Since I like my knees again and I like hugs from short people that I picked up, I don’t think going backward is an option.
