Food...

OK, I have to admit it, I am definitely addicted to food. No I don’t mean that to be funny, I mean I am really addicted. Sure I need food to survive just like everyone else, but I just have to have more and more of it. I can’t help myself sometimes when there is a food I really like, I can’t stop eating it until its gone. This does not bode well for someone who has a sluggish metabolism and has gained a lot of weight which they are trying to lose.

This is where the Weight Watcher’s approach to eating fails me. It allows me to eat anything, literally, but I have to stay within a certain point total for the day. When it comes to those foods I truly love, this becomes problematic as my idea of a portion and theirs definitely do not agree. Their idea is usually somewhere around a cup to cup and a half of any particular food. My idea on the otherhand tends to be 2 or 3 times that for foods I like.

Let’s take cereal as an example. A perfectly reasonable amount for a serving is a cup of cereal and a half cup of milk. For most “healthy” cereals this tends to be between 130 and 180 calories and usually about 3 or 4 points for weight Watchers. Now, when I pour a bowl of cereal, I tend to p0ur between 3 and 4 cups and add 2 cups of milk. The simple math puts this way over 500 calories and likely 12 or 15 points. Obviously not a healthy amount to be eating at any given time.

Now, I normally try to stay sane with what I eat and have a decent amount of success staying within my daily allotment of points, but then there are days that I just go overboard and eat way more than I should, eat - food full of empty calories and just blow my plan out of the water. I find this happens more often on WW than it did when I was eating low carb. I also lost more weight on a low carb diet than I have even come close to on WW. So I’ve decided I need to go back to what works best for me and that is low carb.

My reasoning for moving away from low carb was that I thought I needed the carbs to be able to sustain exercise and compete in the triathlon. At least that is what I told myself and used as a justification. I have been doing some research on the subject and found that its just not true. A proper low carb diet can easily sustain me on long work outs and while competing in an event. So its back to low-carb for me.

Now I will be following the new Atkins low carb plan which stresses 10 to 15 net carbs of foundation vegetables a day. This is a bit different from the traditional low carb plan that everyone usually thinks of which is focused primarily on protein and meat with very few vegetables. I know this will work for me. I have to get in shape. The RAGE triathlon is coming on April 16 so I have 6 months to prepare. This time I will run during the run and break 20 minutes on the swim – just wait and see!