Looking for a Little Digital Precision in My Life...

When I started the low carb WOE (Way of Eating) I was pretty fanatical about tracking the carbage (and other details -fat, carbs, calories, sodium, etc) real close. It helped me develop some really positive habits. I have stayed mostly at induction levels, straying a little here and there but surely staying within OWL levels. I got an account at fitday and tracked everything I ate closely.

I started out around 410 lbs I think, and I am currently at around 322 lbs (though like always my weight has been fluctuating alot up and down). It has been 255 days since I started and I figure I have lost about 88 lbs so far. That works out to an average of 2.41 lbs per week, so not so bad on average. I would say that I was probably losing weight at a faster rate early on and have slowed down a little bit lately. In fact I am starting to get concerned (not major-league concerned, but concerned nonetheless). The past week or two things have been moving slower for me I think. I have been trying to bust through to somewhere between 310 and 320 for the past few weeks. Even on my best efforts my cycles of up and down still have been leaving me around 322, ...though the swings have not been swinging up nearly so high lately.

I am getting fired-up and more motivated than I have been in a while! With a number of popular low carbers seeing tremendous weight loss results on Kimkins lately (in a short period of time) I am thinking I might purchase a digital food scale and get back to the really critical and precise tracking/accounting/analysis of my foods and drinks on a daily basis. I also purchased some Rubbermaid/Tupperware kinda plastic containers so I can pre-cook, measure, and prepare meals ahead of time for myself and store them up in the fridge or freezer. Kinda make my own "Nutri-System" or "WW" type TV dinner meals. Prepackaged No brainers. I am not really thinking about doing Kimkins myself, but maybe a little more carb-conscious and maybe even more carb and calorie restricted on my Atkins than I have been lately.

I would love to see my weight loss moving at a slightly higher clip, and I am getting the realization that as I am losing down to the point that the things that have been working well in the past are working "less well" for me today. My basal metabolic rate is getting lower and so my body is probably more sensitive to any excesses in carbs or calories. Maybe too my body is starting to adjust or push back a little. The weight isn't flying off like it used to, and it appears a little bit like I am hitting some kind of wall or weight loss speed bump anyhow. It might be perfectly normal. It might be a short term thing. Who knows?

I figure I can really get back to tracking things on fitday.com again and tighten things up a little where I need to. In talking with my wife about where I am at and how things have been going the past few weeks we are looking at things that might be causing some slowdowns. Right now I am suspecting small bags of peanuts I eat as snacks at work on occasion, maybe too much cheese occasionally. It is possible that I need to be doing more water and less Diet Sodas and drinks. Maybe less coffee and cream. I dunno. Maybe portions need to be smallerish as I get smallerish. All I know is if I want to continue to see good results I may not be able to lacadaisically lollygagg around about this but may need to be a little more strict with myself. Cut back here and there. Track it. Analyze it. Make some changes. Then see what happens.

If you can recommend a good digital food scale I am all ears. I am looking into what is good out there. I think this is the next logical step for me. I have already determined the following:

- I think I want a digital one versus a mechanical kitchen scale
- I think I want the "tare" or add-to feature that allows you to zero out the weight of a plate or bowl, or add a series of ingredients and measure each incrementally.
- I guess accuracy is important
- I would think the granularity (precision) of measurement is important
- I would also think having a larger upper weight capacity is important too. Some are smaller.


---- Kimkins Contraversy ----

I have been watching and reading some of the Low Carber blog comments and uproar about the Kimkins diet program lately. I have no problem with other folks doing that if that is their decision and it works for them. Same as I feel about Weight Watchers or LA Weightloss, or NutriSystem or whatever.

I am not sure Kimkins is for me tho. I don't like the idea of going low carb and very low calorie (and I have read the debates about describing this diet as low calorie). It reminds me of my own personal experience being on a low calorie diet (First NutriSystem then my own low calorie version of that later) where I ate rabbit food every day, and got so sick of salads and chicken and teeny-tiny "TV-dinner" type diet dinners (with a few tiny micro-chunks of meat in them) after a couple years of it that I could not eat it for years afterward. I lost a hundred pounds then and kept it off for over two years doing that though!

It really was a white-knuckle diet program. I have found Atkins to be so much better and different. I think Atkins is much more sustainable than low cal dieting. It can be a workable way of eating for life. Anyhow I have a pretty visceral response to the very idea of it just based on that experience of mine alone. It brings back some BAD memories or hunger pains, self-denial, and struggle with a way of eating that was difficult for me and not sustainable over the long-haul.

I guess the other turn-offs for me personally when you get past the gut-level reaction are first the commercialization of the program (not unlike other commercial weight loss programs that are nationally recognized), and then also secondly remembering the folks who had heart problems or other problems many many years ago on these high protien low calorie systems/diets that were all the rage when I was on NutriSystem years ago. I can't remember their names but they involved protien drinks and possibly doctors. I remember the big stink in the papers and news at the time about some folks dying on these diets (Heart Muscle Loss, I think, if I recall correctly). So protien diets that are very low in calories or perhaps in some sort of necessary nutrition are scary to me too.

Anyhow I wish Jimmy Moore and Sparky's Girl (and others of my online friends doing Kimkins or other similar programs) all the best on thier new efforts to make some breakthroughs to their goals. I sure hope it works out well for them and they are obviously enjoying great success so far. The results from those doing Kimkins are tremendous and undeniable. The Kimkins-ers also seem to be a very supportive and enthusiastic group.

I also think that those people that are making a stink about this kinda low carb diet probably have good intentions, or perhaps a reservoir of personal experience and recollections that frames their points of view. I certainly think that there is room enough for folks to try different things, and if they are safe and will produce long lasting results - we will see.

For me, I am sticking to the Atkins low carb plan, but may tighten things up and be more restricted and controlled myself as I hit little bumps in the road or struggles here and there and find that I need to do. One of these days I may even start to excercise a little!

Extra! Extra! Read all About It!! Diets in the News...

You can't help but notice a number of recent diet related news articles recently popping up in your newspaper, or on Google News, or in your local TV or Radio News spots.

"Stanford Study Declares Atkins the Winner!" declares one...

In a recent coupla-million dollar study comparing the Atkins diet and several others (the Ornish Diet, the Zone Diet, and the LEARN Diet) the Atkins was found to be the one with the longest lasting and best results. As I understand it, participants of the study were selected to try one of the diets, and were trained in how to do (eat/live) the diet program. Then they were not rigorously managed through the diet process, but left to their own devices for a period of time. In the end, only the Atkins diet had the longest lasting results, and only the Atkins and LEARN diet participants continued weight loss after the six month period from starting the program. Some excellent articles have been written in low carb blogs about the results, about the comments made by various leading nutritional experts, etc. It is well worth looking into if you had not seen this previously.

An additional spate of recent articles proclaim that "Diets don't work". A new study conducted by Dr. Tracy Mann (a professor at UCLA) and her students was recently published in an edition of the journal "American Psychologist" finds that for most people, dieting just doesn't work. They examined the results of approximately 31 diet related studies that had at least one year of follow up data. They found that 41% of people who go on diets end up gaining the weight back and put on **additional weight** from the place they started.

This is something I often noticed and told my wife about every time she told this fatbody about someone elses recent diet. "Just sit back and wait", I would tell her. They will gain it all back, AND THEN SOME shortly. I was never never ever wrong about this, to my recollection. This is one of the reasons I waited so long to pick a plan of weight loss. I wanted something that could last a lifetime, or at least for a very long time - before I started. I met a doctor who kept the weight off for ten years on this way of eating before I started this, and have since met other low carb heros who have lost a hundred or more pounds and have kept it off long term with a low carb way of eating.

The last couple of days there have been a spate of articles stating that the predilection for some to gain weight may be genetic and not the fault of the fat person. That may be. I wonder if this is somehow in response to the articles and studies proclaiming diets don't work...

Anyhow, I am not on a diet. I am on a way of eating and a way of life. So I have nothing to worry about! What say you?