So it is my 50^th day anniversary on MFP, time for some celebrating and some reflection.  First the celebration, cause that is the important part. Really!  It is too easy to beat yourself up and tear yourself down over what you could-a, should-a, would-a done.  We need to celebrate our victories to recharge our psychic batteries less we lose heart and interest.  First it stops being interesting, then you stop logging and interacting, and then to paraphrase Pink Floyd, ‘one day you find ten years have got behind’, and you’re 20 or 50 or 100 lbs heavier and really do have something to beat yourself up over.  So celebrate your victories, even if your victory is avoiding a major failure with a little failure (you ate small popcorn at the movies instead of the washtub sized one with a quart of butter flavored motor oil on it) .

 

50 days, 26 lbs, down a size in everything, able to do 20 pushups in a row (no small accomplish given my tennis elbow and multiple shoulder rehabs), getting more exercise, and loving food again instead of seeing it as an enemy I had to live with.   

Bu-Bu-Bu-Bu-Booh-Ya!

So how did I get here?  Well, first a little history.  I was a normal weight kid up until age 10.  My family moved from a sprawling development outside of Chicago, where I had tons of kids my age to play with, could ride my bicycle everywhere and 3 adjacent backyards easily were transformed into a football field, to the countryside of Connecticut where I took a bus to school instead of walking or riding my bike, friends were streets away, backyards did not connect (no kids next door anyway) and I was the new kid.  Almost overnight I was in Husky sizes.   I got in decent shape during HS and College, I can remember my suit size from shortly after graduation (38 regular jacket, 32” waist) but weight and food was always and issue for me and now I was  grown and as they say, when you stop growing up you start growing out.

 Fast forward to 1997.  I’m miserable.  I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life.  One day just before my 41st birthday I tip the scales at 211.  My barber has been telling me for months about how he eats pepperoni and Swiss cheese for snacks and has lost weight on low carb.  I’m so desperate that I buy a paperback of Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution.  I’m not even through the first few pages and I’m thinking, this is all about me, this is how I feel, he is talking directly to me.  I read the book, I subscribe to mail-lists (the internet exists but we are all still on dial-up mostly and there is little online blogging.  It is still the you’ve got mail era).  I dedicate myself to the Atkins approach and have some success.

I went back and poured through my Dietwatch logs.  Dietwatch was a fantastic service (I think they still exist but as a pay service now).  They had this fantastic plug-in for the Netscape browser.  As nice as the MFP app and on-line is this was better for logging food.  Fantastic database,  accurate,  fast search, brought up the foods that you used first, it did everything and more except for the scanner, cause no one had a Smartphone back then.  So here is what my journeys on Low Carb were like and I’ll contrast that with what I’m experiencing with LCHF and Fast-5.

05/26/97          211      A few days before my 41^st birthday,  Started Atkins
06/28/97          201      -10  1 month
11/09/97          191      -20  4.5 months
01/17/98          186      -25  7.5 months
03/10/98          181      -30  9.5 months
08/29/98          176      -35  15 months
09/14/98          172      -39  15.5 months, that is as low as she goes.
02/15/99          181      -30  1.75 years
12/28/99          186      -25   2.5 years  don’t log again for a year
06/10/00          196      -15   3 years, up 10 in a ½ a year, Oh My!
12/17/00          201      -10   3.5 years
                                        I eventually get back down to 193 but reverse again
11/19/01          211      0       4.5 years, round trip complete
01/05/02          216      +5    New high, restart low carb a few days later
02/22/02          201      -10
05/03/02          194      -17  bounce around this number for a while
09/22/03          201      -10
12/30/03          211      0     Keep coming back to start, rededicate to low carb
06/13/04          201      -10  10 lbs in 6m, losing is tougher than gaining for sure
08/29/04          196      -15  but I stop logging a few days later
09/23/05          202      -9    didn’t log for a year, gained 6, I continue not logging
09/25/06          216      +5   another year, another 10 lbs
12/13/09          226      +15  3 more yrs, lbs climb on, becomes my new normal

05/22/12          225         0   Join MFP, been LCHF and started Fast-5
06/02/12          215      -10   2.5 weeks   Wow, this is working
06/23/12          205      -20   1 month , the Wow continues, can’t be just water
07/07/12          200      -25   1.5 months and 25 lbs.  6m faster than LC in ‘97

Thank you all of my MFP peeps, for your encouragement, for your help, for your support but most of all for keeping it fresh and interesting and helping me to remain interested.  I also know, given my history, that a few weeks of progress is not a life-long win.  Don’t let my head get too big while by body is getting smaller.

More on how my prior forays into Low Carb were unknowingly sabotaged in my next post.