Ads

I enabled ads on this blog out of curiosity. In terms of readership, I really expect this to fall into the "more people read this shirt than your blog" category. While I'm careful not to click on them (don't want to artificially inflate click-thru's and violate the agreement), I do sometimes look at them.

They're all boring. That shouldn't be surprising since the topic is mostly boring. But I wrote once about veins becoming visible, and now there's ads on varicose veins every day. I guess the Google adbots were gratefully for something else to link to. :)

Six weeks, seven weeks, who's counting?

I don't know why, but I am now back on the diet. I never completely left it, it was more of a couple of days on, and a couple of days off. And the off periods weren't horrible, just late-night snacking. I'd eat a couple of Oreo's or home made cookies, a spoonful or two of peanut butter, half a donut, and so on. It even got to the point where I developed a taste for dark chocolate. That's pretty extreme, since I never liked it, only milk chocolate. But now, having been off sugar for so long, I guess my taste buds appreciated the subtlety of the dark chocolate; weird. But I still managed to stay away from the "obvious" carb foods like bread, pizza, pasta.

While I never really gained any weight, I didn't lose any. So after a month and a half, I was still around 222. I will try to be positive about this, and treat it as a learning experience for a life-long eating plan.

After almost a week now, I'm at 216, I think. Or was it 218? It's interesting that I can't remember exactly when I re-started, nor what I weighed this morning. A couple of months ago I was starting to get obsessive about knowing my weight, practically on a real-time basis. Now I don't even know for sure what I weighed this morning! I wonder why? Will things change back after a couple of weeks?

What to do when you fail

Just as I was coming out of my "failure" cycle, this article arrived in my mailbox; the title is very self-descriptive. It's a little too cutesy for me, but the links in that article and the last sentence were good encouragement.

http://www.dailyspark.com/blog.asp?post=a_lesson_in_failure_how_i_picked_myself_back_up

Starting over

I haven't written much the past few weeks. That's because I basically kept "falling off" the diet, getting back into the program for a couple of days, losing it again, and so on. Enough so that for probably a month my weight never got below 225.

It's a real temptation for me, once the weight starts coming back, to admit that the current plan isn't sustainable, it's not going to work long-term, and that once I regain my enthusiasm or find something that works better, or that fits better into my schedule, I'll start over. Until that happens, pound by pound I soon end up back where I was.

I was able to hold those feelings in check this time. Part of the reason was that I find the Atkins plan enjoyable, so I could end up doing one-day-off followed by three-day-on. (I didn't count, but that's what it feels like ended up happening.) As a result I never put on more than five pounds. If I had ever crossed back over the 230 mark, things might have been different.

I've been back on plan for a few days now, and I weigh just a shade over 220. There are a couple of high school graduation parties this weekend, and I really don't want to lose momentum. I'll try really hard to focus on talking with people, and maybe put a couple of bottles of water (and Crystal light:) in the car as emergency rations.

Thank God for Crystal Light

Atkins seems to make me very thirsty. I try to drink no more than one cup of coffee a day, and no more than one or two diet soda's. No juice, no "real" soda, no milkshakes, etc. That doesn't leave much except for water. I like water, but only if it's really cold. But I also get bored by drinking it a couple of times a day.

Here's where Crystal Light and (and similar products, like 4C Totally Light) come to the rescue. At home there's always a quart pitcher in the fridge with the mix, and at the office I have a package with those clever little packets that you pour into a 12/16/20 ounce bottle of water. I drink one or two of those a day. (I buy one bottle at the vending machine and then use it for a few days before recycling it.)