<p>I love the bad carbs. Could live on them.</p>
<p>WW, my pleasure! I particularly recommend a recipe called something like Potted Chicken. Chicken with bacon braised in tomato sauce. Yum…</p>
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<p>Bad carbs and bad fats (which are usually found together) make you fat by giving you lots of calories without satiety, even though they come with little other nutritional value.</p>
<p>^^ Yeah, but they sure taste good.</p>
<p>If any of you feel the need for a real-life support group, consider joining a local T.O.P.S. (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) chapter. They have groups nationwide, and the dues are really reasonable (Mine are $62/year total). </p>
<p>[TOPS</a> Club Inc. - Affordable Weight Loss Support](<a href=“http://www.tops.org/default.aspx]TOPS”>TOPS Club, Inc.)</p>
<p>Thank you for that blog recommendation Alumother…I like how she thinks.</p>
<p>I haven’t heard of TOPS in years…didn’t know they still existed!</p>
<p>Starting the day off with a brunch of pumpkin bread, scrambled eggs and blueberries. Protein in the eggs, blueberries one of the few “superfoods” and the pumpkin bread (just one slice) will be the treat though I made it w/some subsitutions to cut down on sugar and add some nutrition (chopped nuts and dried fruit).</p>
<p>My weight fluctuated a lot each day, too. Never thought of the sodium as being a factor but maybe! In fact I forgot to write my weight down on Friday and forgot it already (jeesh! the memory!). So I weighed myself today and it is definitely lower than on Friday. I split the difference and wrote it on my calendar.</p>
<p>That problem is the thinking behind weighing yourself once per week when you are trying to lose weight. If I weigh in every day I get either overly encourage (and then overindulge) or get discouraged (and then overindulge). Weighing in once per week gives the scale a chance to read the actual weight loss without those day to day fluctuations.</p>
<p>If I am not gaining or losing weight, my weight (according to my scale) fluctuates up and down by about ~1.5 pounds (up one day, down the next). </p>
<p>I went out to eat Fri, I go out so infrequently I did not pick the healthiest choice. I stocked up on some good foods and snacks for the week, and I am going to try to get back on the elliptical today.</p>
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<p>A double hit on the pleasure centers of the brain.</p>
<p>There are a lot of foods out there that taste good but perhaps with less intensity than sugars, fats and carbs in general. It means removing a lot of things from the diet though.</p>
<p>Martina99,</p>
<p>If you go out infrequently, you should enjoy it! I go out too often! My Dad died recently and I have been taking my mom out about once or twice a week to get her out of the apartment. That has to stop! Maybe go for walks or something instead. Good luck today, Martina, getting started.</p>
<p>I love the blog (Jan’s Sushi Bar), but I have to say the thought of going high-fat scares me. She is not the first person I’ve heard of whose weight, cholesterol profile, etc., all improved dramatically after switching to this diet, but avoiding fat, except for small amounts of “good fats”, is second nature.</p>
<p>Hi there, everyone. Thought I would join you all on this thread as I started Weight Watchers Online 2 weeks ago. </p>
<p>I lost 3.5 pounds the first week and 0 lbs the second week. A little disappointed. The first week I didn’t touch those 49 extra points but this week I used about half of them. I was much hungrier this past week for some reason. (I’ve also been doing 30 Day Shred along with Weight Watchers.)</p>
<p>One more week and I am off on vacation . I fear I will gain back the weight I just lost and then some. My body really struggles to release pounds. Hoping this week will be better.</p>
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<p>My diet is about 50% calories from fats now and I’ve had major improvements too. The idea of going to low carbs scared me too but going down to about 33% carbs didn’t sound so bad and I could always go back up to 55% if things didn’t work out.</p>
<p>The idea is that the overall amount of calories that you eat is lower even though your percentage of fats is higher (and your percentage of protein too). Eating fewer calories, because you’re less hungry, makes it easier to lose weight which makes those other improvements doable.</p>
<p>If you’re afraid of going high-fat, you could track your nutritional inputs for a while to get a baseline and then change the mix to eat five or ten percent lower carbs for a few weeks to see how it goes.</p>
<p>I have also switched over to a high fat/moderate protein/low carb diet, about 60% of my calories coming from fat and it is amazing how much less you need to eat when you are eating a high percentage of fat. The problem with low-fat foods is that they replace the fat with carbs which are converted to sugar in your body which not only make you fat but cause you to become hungry again very quickly. Before I started eating this way, I would never have believed it but I’m a convert now. I also feel about 1000% better after eating a meal at a restaurant. Now I have a big ole steak, a caesar salad/no croutons and some steamed broccoli along with a couple of low-carb beers and I walk out of there with a perfectly flat stomach and I don’t need to eat again until noon the next day. I used to have a grilled chicken breast, a baked potato with low-fat sour cream, a good portion of the bread basket or a giant plate of pasta and I’d feel like that was a healthy meal because it was low-fat. Meanwhile, I’d have to unbutton my pants because I’d get all bloated.</p>
<p>I am glad you enjoy the blog. I understand your reservations, me I can’t give up whole grains. In any case, her recipes are good and well-communicated. I’d recommended cooking them as presented, with the fats she uses, maybe stick to your “good fats” in other cooking endeavors? I have switched to coconut oil and butter to cook with, even for Chinese cooking I’ll use coconut oil. On the other hand, I don’t like the mouth feel of most fats, and never have, so I am not making myself eat the pork fat that solidifies on top of my pork adobo, for example.</p>
<p>I want to thank everyone who recommended hummis and veggies. It’s one of the few healthy foods I’ve enjoyed. Delicious!</p>
<p>I’m in! what a great thread. just the extra motivation I need. have lost just about 50 lbs exercising daily, finally got to the point where when I don’t exercise, I feel “off”. glad I have developed this new sense and wish I had sooner. doing WW like many on here, although haven’t been going to meetings regularly and just last few days have been slipping off the wagon…didn’t count my points, and kind of moving into that rewarding myself with junk food territory. glad I can see it happening and stop it. I think the 0 points for fruit has created too much sugar in my daily diet and created cravings which I started to indulge. so like several of you have suggested and are doing, I’m going back to no simple carbs and pairing lean protein at each meal and snack. Thanks EPTR</p>
<p>You’re welcome! Yes, WW works but I struggle with staying motivated on it. As I got older I would not lose weight as easily as I had when I was younger and then I would get discouraged and eat more! Hopefully we can keep each other on track when we falter…and falter we will. </p>
<p>Today I went to the gym and did cardio for twenty minutes and them weights. I feel good that I worked out! Now I have to go to an Anniversary party…ughhh. Hope I can exercise self control!</p>
<p>Eating high-fat does feel strange because we have been taught that fat is bad. I’m not so sure anymore. I have been reading up on it a lot recently. Apparently, the science behind the low-fat craze was speculative at best. I was working for a cardiac rehab program when the low-fat recommendations came down. The funny thing was we noticed almost immediately that the cardiac patients who were eating low-fat started gaining weight (definitely not what a cardiac patient needs to do). They even started calling it the Snackwell Effect - after the low-fat Snackwell cookies everyone started eating. </p>
<p>[The</a> Snackwell Effect](<a href=“The Snackwell Effect | Acupuncture Today”>The Snackwell Effect | Acupuncture Today)</p>
<p>I’m beginning to think that a high-fat, high protein, low-carb diet with a good variety of fruits and veggies makes the most sense. You don’t necessary need to eat super high-fat but you definitely need enough fat to feel satisfied. I’ve tried going low carb, low fat before and was starving all the time. On a high fat, high protein diet you rarely feel hungry.</p>