WW Week 10-1/2 -- is it an epiphany?

I'm getting really frustrated with the fact that I can't get below 200 pounds, especially when I just started a little over 209. At my 8th week, another girl was celebrating her 16th week and had lost about 25 pounds. As a matter of fact, Jenny did the same thing! Geeze! At this rate it will be a miracle if I don't quit first!

But this week something happened. On Tuesday I went to the funeral home to see Jack McGraw's family. On the way out I saw Irma Eschbacher pull in to a parking spot, so I waited to talk to her. She has lost a tremendous amount of weight -- so much that last summer I even asked a friend if she had had gastric bypass surgery. I waved her over, gave her a big hug and told her she was my hero -- and she most definitely is! I asked her what she did to lose so much weight. She said that her husband had been diagnosed with diabetes three years ago, so she decided to change the way they ate. They have nurse/dieticians that helped set up a diet to control his blood sugar, but basically they went low carb. She said it took her about a year to go from a size 18 to a size 6. She said she didn't know how much weight she lost, because she never weighs. Buck's sugar is now under control at around 123. They walk about 1/2 an hour a day.

Now to Sandy Puckett... she's lost about 30 pounds in about 6 months. She said the only way she can lose weight is to cut carbs.

I have a book about Carbohydrate Addicts by Drs. Richard and Rachel Heller. I picked it up a yard sale and it has sat on my bookshelf with my other weight loss books for a year or so. I happened to take a look at it for the first time this week. So much of what it says relates very closely to what I've been experiencing.

One week, right after Easter, I gained 5.2 pounds. When I went back over my WW tracking booklet, I saw that that week I ate so many carbs! I stayed within my WW points allowance, but I STILL gained over 5 pounds in one week! For lunch one day I had Chinese, with the related MSG and soy sauce. I didn't have any fried stuff (well, maybe 3-4 bite-size pieces of General Tso's chicken...) and ate mainly vegetables. But this book says that MSG and soy sauce stimulate your body to produce insulin, which in turn causes it to store fat.

The next night for supper we had spaghetti and bread. More carbs. The next day for lunch I had Campbell's vegetable soup, with its carrots, potatoes, corn, and little alphabet noodles, all of which are high in carbs. The soup was just veggie soup with very little protein. Two Special K protein bars because I was so hungry from the carbs that stimulated my appetite. Supper that night was more spaghetti. I remember this evening particularly -- Leonard was so tired that he laid down on the bed for a while to rest. I was so hungry that for the whole hour and a half that he slept, I ate. I counted my points and somehow stayed within my 24-point limit, but I ate carbs and more carbs! A Weight Watcher's brownie (only 2 points, but made with real sugar and flour), Puffcorn, an orange (fructose), a Weight Watcher's fudge bar (even if is IS sugar-free, it still stimulates your cravings to eat more!), AND another orange! Nothin' but carbs all day!

The next day I went to Noni's to take her some daylilies and hostas. Lunch was a spinach salad with grilled chicken from Applebee's. It was, I now realize, good for me in terms of carbs. But fried potatoes for supper. Saturday evening we went to El Nopalito. I'm sure we had chicken fajitas, but I'm also sure I had a margarita -- alcohol which turns to sugar! Sunday was pizza for lunch (carb crust), and a veggie grill burger with bun for supper. Veggie soup (carbs and salt) for lunch on Monday, a WW cookies and cream 1 point bar and a Hostess cupcake 100 calorie pack -- all carbs! I'm beginning to see that this might be my problem -- that carbs might be stimulating my appetite to just eat more and more.

So I'm going to try to follow this low-carb book, at least for a few weeks, and see if it makes a difference in my weigh-ins. I know I won't lose any huge amounts of weight (like 5 pounds a week), but if I can at least lose SOMEthing every week without going up and down, I'll be a believer in this Carb Addict idea.

I'm starting to realize that what you eat does affect your entire being. Food is medicine in a way. It can do bad things to you, or hopefully, it can do good things. All you have to do is realize it's power and potential and use it to your benefit.